At Books & Culture, Betty Smartt Carter’s “The Good Man Philip and the Scoundrel Pullman” is an amusing summary of Philip Pullman’s career, written as a semi-parody of the Grand Idea of his recent novel (The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ), in which twins named “Jesus” and “Christ” (so, one was Jewish and one was Greek, and one got a real name and one got a title?) get to embody the qualities that Philip Pullman does and doesn’t like, respectively, about the Jesus of the Bible.
I haven’t read Pullman’s latest, since I lost any appetite for Pullman after The Amber Spyglass (the third volume of the His Dark Materials trilogy), but one of the things I like about Carter’s parable is that it captures the sense of initial intrigue (mixed with a little uneasiness) that many readers experienced when starting His Dark Materials, followed by disappointment as Pullman’s engaging writing style was overcome by his need to “preach” his particular beliefs about the church and God. It looks like that trend has only continued.
Carissa Turner Smith is a compulsive reader, writer, and Irish dancer. She earned her Ph.D. in English at Penn State and currently teaches writing and American literature at Charleston Southern University. At age three, she announced that all she wanted to do was “sit at a desk and read and write,” and she has been trying to make good on that promise ever since. Fortunately, she is occasionally distracted from this mission by her husband Stephen and their cheese-obsessed cat. A loyal native of Arkansas, she has always loved the fact that Jesus dwelt in an underappreciated corner of Galilee (see John 1:46). 
Wow. Sums up everything I’ve felt about Pullman (or is it Phillip?) with more nuance than I could’ve even imagined.
Yeah, looking back at my review of Pullman’s trilogy, I wasn’t all that nuanced either:
So what you didn’t like about the Amber Spyglass was that it was too preachy? Just curious.
I found all the books preachy–mostly the first and last though. I rather enjoyed The Subtle Knife.
Here’s my comments on the last book from my review of the series.
And this was my reaction after thoroughly enjoying the first book. (Well, until the finale of Compass, which was the first indication that Pullman had bitten off far more than he could chew narratively speaking).
Yeah I am with you–its been a while since I read them, but now I am remembering how boring the last book was!