 
|
The sequel to The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife is the second in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy that tells of the fate of a little girl named Lyra who is destined to change the fate of her world. The Subtle Knife, strangely, opens not with Lyra but with Will, a boy of about Lyra’s age and not from her world. Will, we find out, will also influence the fate of the world, and it’s not long before he meets up with Lyra in another world that is neither hers nor his. Will and Lyra’s fates are intertwined, and they spend the rest of the book on their journey together, though we never find out if they are truly on the same side.
Pullman’s second book is no less creative than his first, which introduced us to Lyra’s world where witches, armored bears and daemons (the soul of a person that is personified in an animal accompanying them at all times) are the norm. In this book, he expands on these concepts while introducing even more fantastic notions, such as other worlds that lie just beyond our own and can be entered through gaps in the air, specters that feed on adults’ souls but leave children alone, and a knife that can cut through anything and upon which the fate of all the world hinges.
The problem with the first book is magnified here: the characters are just too difficult to relate to and never quite take on a life of their own. Instead of going deeper into the characters in this second book and solving that problem, Pullman instead introduces more characters, which just leaves us with less page time to get to know the ones we’ve already met. Many of the characters who were so crucial in the first book get hardly any mention in this one; even Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, are featured in fewer than half of the chapters.
That doesn’t mean that The Subtle Knife is a bad book by any means, though. Pullman’s imagination is startling and on display front and center in this second book. He easily takes the reader into new worlds and depicts scenes with vivid clarity (sometimes a little too vivid—this book can be gruesome in parts and probably isn’t appropriate for those young readers who scare easily). Though you may not be in love with the characters, you will be riveted by what happens next and find it hard to put the book down.
If you’ve made it through The Golden Compass, you’ll want to pick up The Subtle Knife to continue following Lyra on her strange and wonderful journey. And, of course, if you’ve finished The Subtle Knife, you probably can’t wait to get The Amber Spyglass, the last in the series, to see how it all turns out.
|
|
The Subtle Knife, 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman