What We’re Reading

His Dark Materials, Book 2: The Subtle Knife | Philip Pullman

Rating:

I originally started re-reading this series when I first saw The Golden Compass preview on TV. Since it has come to annoy me, as having recently read the book again, I can tell they’ve altered the story. Unfortunately, I put down The Subtle Knife for a long time while concentrating on school books and other reads. Surprisingly, picking it up again after a long span of time, I was able to jump right back in, and it was every bit as compelling. But it does make reviewing it a little harder.

We pick up Lyra’s story just after she’s gone into the hole in the sky created by her father, intent on finding him and putting a stop to whatever he’s doing. Instead of finding Lord Asriel, however, she finds herself in a beautiful city inhabited by only children. Some invisible menace known as Specters has driven off, or killed, all the adults.

A series of events conspire to unite Lyra with Will, a boy who grew up in an Oxford very much like, and very different from, her own. Will is searching for his father, missing for 12 years. Lyra has vowed to help him. Along the way of course comes the unexpected trouble of having the alethiometer stolen by and old man who turns out to be someone Lyra has already had a run-in with, the police looking for both she and Will, brokering a deal to go after a mysterious knife, only to find out it’s incredibly powerful and has deemed Will its new master.

It’s a very fast read, with never a dull moment. Any Pullman fan or Potter fan yet to read His Dark Materials will find plenty to like. And you’ll certainly be left wanting to know how it will all end.

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The His Dark Materials, Book 2: The Subtle Knife | Philip Pullman by Jaemi, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 10:24 am by Jaemi and is filed under Book Review, Series. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: adventure, death/loss, family problems, fantasy, magic, ya fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.