Philip I love you but this book did not improve on a reread 😪 that's not to say I didn't enjoy it - being immersed in the world of His Dark Materials again is wonderful, and Pullman's prose is as evocative and beautiful as always 💗 but I really get the sense that his weakness is plotting. While there's something to be said for giving creative power over to the world and characters of the book to see where that might take you, I think there is also value in a more clear, structured storyline, particularly for a novel that is essentially an adventure story. I struggled with the meandering and repetitive nature of this book: the number of times Lyra meets someone new, tells them about her past, then they tell her about the desert and/or Lop Nor and/or the roses and/or the Blue Hotel... had me going cross eyed. I somehow found it more difficult to follow along, even though I'd been reading the same story over and over throughout these 600+ pages. I want to see how the story resolves so will definitely be reading The Rose Field, but for me this "equal" series just pales in comparison to the original His Dark Materials 🥲

Whew! Although this book is relatively short, it feels hefty to read!! It's truly a fascinating exploration of human history, scientific discovery, and the night sky, but I did feel it was oddly inconsistent at times. I thought some concepts were explained effectively in a simple and straightforward manner, while others were worded strangely and very hard to grasp. Then again, I don't have any science background so maybe I am just stupid 😶 but I did feel this book was aimed at the average yet curious layperson so it was confusing! I felt like there was some slightly clunky writing at the sentence level that interrupted the flow and made things tricky to follow. That being said, this was clearly written with a lot of genuine, heartfelt enthusiasm and love for humanity's curiosity about the stars - a theme that really gets me, and the epilogue hits home with this! 🥹