Customer Reviews
Truly magnificent in its complexity ... an amazing tale ...
The Subtle Knife has opened my eyes to more amazing conceptions, as does all of my favorite books. Such tales of alternate dimensions and mystical creatures have awed me since I have been able to read. Any person with a wonderful book and an overactive imagination can find themselves immersed in fabulous worlds and gripping nightmares. The Subtle Knife ranks among some of the top books I have read including J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Madeline L' Engle's A Wrinkle In Time quartet and several other amazing stories of grand things. Among fantasy novels my interests in books also lie with science-fiction, something that The Subtle Knife and its counterpart, The Golden Compass, can both tie in to. It amazes me that any person could weave such a tale of complexity and power. Unfortunately, all of the stories that I have ever written (none have been finished) cannot compare with such a tale that wraps within its own events or involves so many places and people. For any person who has not yet read The Subtle Knife it is something that you should not pass up. The story is one involving stupendous characters from the same places in different universes that can partially interact with each other, but not directly. To understand, one must truly read the book for one's self along with the first book, The Golden Compass. So I leave it to you, my dear readers, to follow your interests. Hopefully they will lead you to The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife, for they are books that the fantasy/science-fiction reader should check in to.
The Subtle Knife
This book left me so confused that it would practically be impossible for me not to be counting down the days until the release of the third book in this amazing trilogy. When I say that this book left me confused, I'm paying it a complement. Pullman kept me reading this book by his wonderful use of suspense, and he continues his suspense through to the next book of the series. Just as soon as I thought I knew what was going on, who the "Authority" might be, who is "good", who is "bad", and where all the characters fit into the story, Pullman takes the plot in a totally unexpected direction. I borrowed "The Subtle Knife" from the library, thinking it would be a book that I read once and never picked up again. And now you find me at my computer, the day after I finished the book, ordering this book, "The Golden Compass," and "The Amber Spyglass." I strongly urge you to read this book asap, and you might as well order the third volume now... I guarantee you'll want to keep reading.
More gripping.
This is the second book of His Dark Materials (after Northern Lights, or The Golden Compass in the US, and before The Amber Spyglass).
Will Parry is a twelve-year-old boy living in Oxford with his mother, who's suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and his cat Moxie. His father, an arctic explorer, has gone missing almost since the boy was born.
Will's mother has been facing more and more crises of late, and strangers have been harrassing her repeatedly, asking questions about her husband, about the letters he sent her twelve years ago. Will decides to send her to his old piano teacher's house to keep her safe, but when these men come back and search their home, Will accidently kills one of them. Not wanting to call the police because they would put his mother into hospital, he takes his father's letters from their hiding place in the sewing machine, and flees.
But walking on the side of the road, he sees a cat much like Moxie suddenly disappear. Examining the patch of grass more closely, he discovers a window, resolves to cross it, and finds himself in Cittàgazze, a sun-drenched, palm-treed city on the sea shore, in another world.
The city looks as if everyone just left in a hurry though, and when Will is looking for food in the recently abandoned cafés, he stumbles onto a lost young girl, Lyra. Although shocked to see a human without a daemon, and after asking her alethiometer for advice, she knows she can trust Will, and they finally decide to help each other.
The rest of the book describes how they travel back and forth between worlds, Will searching for his father, Lyra gathering information about Dust, both making new allies as well as meeting new enemies, facing new, more deadly dangers.
I liked The Subtle Knife more than Northern Lights (US title: The Golden Compass), was more gripped by it as a whole. I particularly enjoyed the connections between Lyra's and Will's (our) Oxford, when Lyra discovers what is similar, and what is not, to the place where she grew up. There's still a rather mystic edge to the story which I don't quite get, but I guess everything will clear up in the last chapter.
