Loved the first half. I liked Malcolm (even though he was a little too mary-sue) and enjoyed reading about his involvement with Oakley Street. I liked his instant attachment to baby Lyra. But once the flood came, I became less and less enamored. It got a little bit too weird and fantastical for me. Setting aside the fact that these kids should have died thousands of time, it was difficult for me to get behind the faerie queen stuff, and the brutal scene with Alice at the end. And I'm not prudish about "adult" language, but the f bombs did seem a little jarring for me. Overall, I enjoyed it, but I still am not sure why this was written.

I really wanted to like it, but this was disappointing. If it hadn't been related to the His Dark Materials trilogy, I probably wouldn't have finished it. The whole thing was melancholy and sad. It wasn't very fun to read Lyra and Pan fighting and hating each other.
Malcolm was fine in the Belle Sauvage, but he was super creepy here. I hated the set up of a Lyra/Malcolm romance - he helped feed her and care for her as a baby! He was her teacher when she was a young teenager! It's creepy as hell to be attracted to her. Especially in the world of #metoo. On that, I hated that there was an attempted rape scene of Lyra near the end. Why was this necessary? Especially after the rape of Alice in the last book. It added nothing to Lyra's development. We don't need rape as a plot device. Especially not with both of the main female characters.
I didn't understand why I was supposed to care about the overall plot. There wasn't a flow to the story. It was just random event after random event.
but there were things I liked. The beginning was promising, and I enjoyed seeing the normal life of college Lyra. And I was intrigued about the older Princess who had a relationship with the dancer and lost her Daemon. In fact, I wish we had got that story instead!

I didn’t really care for Book 2 of the Book of Dust trilogy, but still I really wanted to see how it all wrapped up.

It started off promising! I was enjoying the first 40% or so. But then it did something unforgivable - it completely negated the ending of the Amber Spyglass! Because of that, I kind of wish I never picked up this series. The windows need to be closed! (And if they don’t, then Lyra needs to find Will!!)

Aside from that, there’s a bunch of things that didn’t make sense. I didn’t really understand the “Lyra lost her imagination” thing in the first place. And this book was so meandering and there were so many characters that we followed that I didn’t particularly care about. But the interesting things didn’t really get explored in depth.

I was worried that Malcolm and Lyra were going to end up together - there was too much hinting towards it and it gave me the creeps! I’m glad they didn’t get together, but since they didn’t, I’m not really sure what the point of Malcolm was - or any of his side quests.

It also really didn’t make sense for Lyra to have a secret half brother - I don’t buy that Mrs. Coulter had 2 secret children!

Finally, I was sad we didn’t see Will, but I guess wasn’t really expecting to - it just would have made it a little better.

This wasn’t completely terrible - but overall, I did not like it. On the plus side, it really makes me want to reread the original trilogy. I just have to forget this one!