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The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials) by: Philip Pullman

Publisher: Scholastic Point
Release date: 16th October, 1998
Media: Paperback

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Editorial Review

At the end of The Northern Lights, Lyra Silvertongue watched in fear and fascination as her father, Lord Asriel, created a bridge between worlds. Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, are now lost in an alternate universe where they meet Will Parry, a fugitive from a third universe. Will has found a small window between Cittagazze (a place where children roam unchecked but invisible Specters suck the spirit out of adults) and his Oxford, which, with its Burger Kings and cars, is frighteningly different from the Oxford Lyra knows.

Will's father, an explorer, disappeared years ago, but recently some odd characters have started asking questions about him, and now, having accidentally killed one of them, Will is wanted by the police. Armed with the Subtle Knife, a tool that cuts any material (including that which separates universes) and Lyra's alethiometer, the children set out to find John Parry, with adults of various stripes in desperate pursuit.

Lyra's finest qualities, her courage and quick mind, are stretched to the limit as she has to lie, cheat and steal to keep herself and Will out of danger. However, she must also learn when to tell the truth and when to trust, for, though she does not yet know it, she has a huge part to play in the upcoming battle between Good and Evil.

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Average rating - (more reviews)

Rating: - What happened to Lyra?

After a riveting first book, this was a disappointment. We open in a different world from where Northern Lights (the Golden Compass) ended but that much is fine and almost to be expected. We long to meet our heroine from the first story, yet when she finally appears she has become a completely different character. Gone is the bravery and curiosity of before. Much of the book is contrived and doesn't quite work with the earlier volume. It's not bad, but it would have been better to have stopped before writing this and maintained the great memory of the original adventure.

Rating: - The Difficult Second Book of the Trilogy...

The novel follows on directly from Northern Lights although the initial action is set in our own world and we are introduced to a new protagonist, Will. Pursued by mysterious men, he finds his way into a strange - and apparently deserted - city. There he meets Lyra who had crossed the bridge from here own world to this new one.

Lyra is intent on investigating Dust despite the Alethiometer giving her a new mission - to find Will's father. Their story unwinds with travels between the world of the deserted city and the Oxford of our own world. There are also things afoot in the world from which Lyra comes which are of great import towards the end of the novel.

Compared to the first novel, I felt this one was a little disappointing, as if Pullman had lost a little of his focus. The individual story seemed, somehow, incomplete while the arc storyline initially developed along the lines suggested by the first book before abruptly changing direction. I also felt as if the writing had lost some of the sparkle which distinguished the first book.

Rating: - Philip Pullman

After the Harry Potter books one needs something else. Philip Pullman filled that hole.
An easy read, full of great imaginative ideas and captivating characters. All the stories tie together and makes a great read.
Get them they are great!

Rating: - Rather boring.

People aren't going to like me for not liking this series, but though I normally really love big thick books, this trilogy has more problems than I can list here, the main one being how boring it is, first one is 0k, second one takes forever and a lot of the plot points don't make a great deal of sense when you think about it, why is she explicitly attracted to murderers, for example (that's a little creepy to be honest).

In this book her original friend, who she travelled half way round the world for, is discarded with hardly a thought for her new, and more-or-less identical, companion (I noticed that an awful lot of the characters feel copy-pasted, most of the white bears are paper-thin and all the antagonists seem to run on bile with no convincing motive or personality).

First book is 0k action-wise, but highly prejudiced and ever-ready to caricature, the second and third are the same, but overlong, very slow, and very boring with very little in the way of good action, to the point that I barely finished them, I'm not sure what the hype is about really, controversy couldn't make Dan Brown a good author, but he's still better than Pullman, who seems to hate rather a lot of people in a way I can only describe as xenophobic.

Rating: - Great, slightly more adult, continuation of the series

The adventure continues, this is subtly slightly more adult, more SF and less straight fantasy than Northern Lights. Great stuff and I am particularly taken with the concept of daemons shared by the people of Lyra's world.

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