The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

This novel is perhaps the worst of the His Dark Materials trilogy, though of course one couldn't appreciate the trilogy without reading this book. Pullman has constructed a church so evil, it's impossible not to hate organized religion, which is all well and good--except that it makes the moral decisions in the book too easy. Also, the book is filled with easy ways out--between the knife, the alethiometer, and the spyglass. While Will and Lyra make a hard decision at the end, by the time they get there, these other flaws in the books make that decision far less significant than it could have been.