There's just... So much to unpack here. Such a long and dense book. It's very emotional to spend time with Lyra again. It does sometimes feel like not that much actually happens in the like 600 pages, but it also packs in so much of both world building and that super complex Phillip Pullman brand of philosophy. Surely a lot of it is pretentious, and surely sometimes he oversteps himself in depicting various cultures, but it's so ambitious -- even incredibly meta -- I have to give it credit.