Oh Philip.Pullman is an author that has enraged me with every book of his I've read (this is number 3) yet I keep going back to him. I love Fairy Tales. Fairy tales are a little crazy and very messy and Pullman, in his wisdom, has decided that this simply wont do. In my opinion he has removed any heart from the stories and left in their place 50 well formed yet vacuous works of fiction. It's not all bad though. It has a beautiful cover ;-) Full review here