written by gingerds on 23/11/2012
The Ruby in the Smoke has to be without a doubt one of the worst books I have ever encountered. It lacks interesting, well developed characters and has the most bum numbingly boring plot. I didn't know what was going on half the time because it was just so tedious. I have never read any other of Philip Pullman's books and I am not planning to. How anyone can enjoy this book is beyond me. We read it in class and it was the worst half term of my life. I have three words to sum up this book: Generic, boring and plotless. Could someone please tell me why you like this book? Anyone? I guess not. It is God awful. I give it a one out of five and if I could I would give it zero because it is just that bad.
written by on 04/11/2010
I would not recommend this book to anyone. I was a huge fan of Pullman; I worshipped the ground he walked on after reading his dark materials. But The ruby in the smoke was one of the most boring books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Sally is quite possibly the most mundane heroine I have ever encountered in a novel, she's generic and boring. I am still unaware of the significance the ruby had at all, if it was just because everyone wanted it for money that's very lacklustre. Overall Pullman really disappointed me with this, I don't plan on reading any of the sequels.
written by on 05/12/2009
The Ruby in the Smoke was honestly one of the most boring books in my opinion ever (partly because we read it as a group for a project, it still would have been pretty bad though).
Everything is just too dang complicated! The book also made the main point of the story extremely hard to understand. They should have simplified the book a lot.
Even after seeing the movie and reading the book I still don't see the ruby's significance. But that might be because I was too bored to pay attention to such a boring book.
The very start of the book is pretty good, but after you get past the letter (which is like 20 minutes into the book...) the next 2/3 of the book is just a huge dragging amount of facts and facts that you eventually skim because you just want to know what happens.
The problem comes at the skim, as the book is so boring, you don't know a lot of the basic things. When the book starts to get interesting, you have no clue whats going on because the start of the book is just too danm boring!
DO NOT READ. EVER!!
Have a nice day :)
written by on 23/05/2008
Well written and thought out yet very hard to follow and confusing.
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