A far faster and lighter read then the first one in the trilogy (Northern Lights), I didn't realise why until I'd finished and compared it to the first one. It was far less detailed then the first but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Rather then spending all that time reading into and absorbing the details you could really get into the story. Although it was a bit more predictable.
I enjoyed the introduction of Will but I didn't like how Lyra was portrayed. Something about her character seemed a bit off putting which left me not liking her as much. A thing I don't think is very good when it's one of the main characters. The dialogue that involved her was better though and so was some of the punctuation.