After polling a few of my friends, this round of His Dark Materials is where many of them almost fell off the wagon with this series; my friend Luke actually did stop reading it when he got to this one. I’ll admit it, too: The Subtle Knife gets a bit weird. It also introduces a LOT of new characters, and with this being the shortest book in the series it all happens super quickly. That being said, it’s absolutely worth sticking with it.
This novel is quite a bit darker than its predecessor, The Golden Compass. There’s also a lot more anti-religion stuff. Again, this didn’t bother me at all. I found it really interesting and it definitely made me think. The plot is super complex, but I’ll do my best to break it down a bit.
Lyra, our forceful heroine, finds an ally at the start of the book. Will Parry, a boy close to Lyra’s own age, has escaped into the same world that Lyra follows Lord Asriel into at the end of The Golden Compass. Having lost Asriel, Lyra is alone and lost in Cittagazze, which is a sort of gateway between different worlds. Will finds his way into this place as well, and after getting off to a rather rocky start the two become close friends. Will is one of the best characters in this trilogy thus far, and characters are a strength of Pullman’s so that’s saying a lot. He’s from “our” world, meaning he drinks Coke, goes to the movies and knows how to make a mean omelette. He’s also brave, thoughtful, and strong in a way that Lyra isn’t, so the two complement each other well. A lot of the focus of this novel is on the relationship between Will and Lyra, and it’s really interesting to see it grow.
Back to plot. In a really complicated series of events (like I said, the plot is seriously twisty and complex in this book), Will becomes master of a knife that can cut entrances into different worlds. This knife (the “subtle knife”) is also so sharp that it can cut through any material. Lyra and Will use this knife to search for Will’s father, who disappeared when Will was a baby, and also to find Lyra’s alethiometer, which was stolen from her by a seriously creepy old man from Will’s world. Along the way, characters from The Golden Compass reappear and new characters are introduced, such as Mary Malone, an ex-nun who studies Dust in Will’s world. Mary is where a lot of the anti-religion stuff comes into play, because she isn’t really a fan of the church. At all.
I probably did a terrible job of trying to explain this book, because there’s so much going on, and I hope I don’t deter anyone from picking it up. I really did like it. Will is awesome, Lyra is still super fierce, and I could literally feel the tension build as the events of the plot came together in preparation for the last part of the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass. Because I am an idiot, I left my book at home when I went back to college last weekend, so I’m reading some different stuff right now. Hopefully I’ll get back home to get His Dark Materials soon, because I really want to see how it all ends up.