His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

I know it's a kids book but it does annoy me how universally lauded these books are.

The first two books were great but I'm convinced that the last book was written years earlier or by someone else. At the very least he must have been under time pressures from his publisher or just bored.

Wheeled elephants and ickle people riding round on dragon flies?!?!?!?!?!?!

Why does it descend into some utterly lame Mills and Boon? Are we meant to believe that all the corruptions and rifts and lethargies and imbalances and all the other problems of ALL the millions of worlds that have been going on for hundreds of years are solved by two kids having a bit of fumble in the forest? What happened with the huge apocalyptic battle to end all battles between The Authority and Lord Asriel? The new, ruthless meritcoracy gathers forces from across the dimensions to challenge the old, corrupt regime.....Three rather shoddily decribed pages then God died of old age (a monumental event which took up all of two lines) and the archangel along with two other central characters fell into some sort of pit......and that was that...now for 200 pages of romantic drivel as bookending.

There are so many things I could ask "What was the point of........" (Those people chasing Will at the start of the book, Where did Asriel's gigantic castle & huge army come from if he only found out how to cross into other worlds at the end of book one, What was that super-duper thought-powered helicopter thingy, those destructive giant swans, the priest-assasin who just gets killed etc etc etc) but the whole thing has become the emporers new clothes so no-one gives you an answer.

Feel free to mail me and put me right on these points but I was SO disappointed with the final part. Instead of being praised to high heaven it should be exposed as the rubbish it is because people are wasting their time reading books one and two and getting to the point of no return and having to press on whilst soft lad is getting very rich off the procedes."

*Breathe*