His Dark Materials, Book 2: The Subtle Knife
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His Dark Materials, Book 2: The Subtle Knife
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Amazon.com Review
With Philip Pullman garnered every accolade under the sun. Critics lobbed around such superlatives as "elegant," "awe-inspiring," "grand," and "glittering," and used "magnificent" with gay abandon. Each reader had a favorite chapter--or, more likely, several--from the opening tour de force to Lyra's close call at Bolvangar to the great armored-bear battle. And Pullman was no less profligate when it came to intellectual firepower or singular characters. The dæmons alone grant him a place in world literature. Could the second installment of his trilogy keep up this pitch, or had his heroine and her too, too sullied parents consumed him? And what of the belief system that pervaded his alternate universe, not to mention the mystery of Dust? More revelations and an equal number of wonders and new players were definitely in order.
The Subtle Knife offers everything we could have wished for, and more. For a start, there's a young hero--from our world--who is a match for Lyra Silvertongue and whose destiny is every bit as shattering. Like Lyra, Will Parry has spent his childhood playing games. Unlike hers, though, his have been deadly serious. This 12-year-old long ago learned the art of invisibility: if he could erase himself, no one would discover his mother's increasing instability and separate them.
As the novel opens, Will's enemies will do anything for information about his missing father, a soldier and Arctic explorer who has been very much airbrushed from the official picture. Now Will must get his mother into safe seclusion and make his way toward Oxford, which may hold the key to John Parry's disappearance. But en route and on the lam from both the police and his family's tormentors, he comes upon a cat with more than a mouse on her mind: "She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will." What seems to him a patch of everyday Oxford conceals far more: "The cat stepped forward and vanished." Will, too, scrambles through and into another oddly deserted landscape--one in which children rule and adults (and felines) are very much at risk. Here in this deathly silent city by the sea, he will soon have a dustup with a fierce, flinty little girl: "Her expression was a mixture of the very young--when she first tasted the cola--and a kind of deep, sad wariness." Soon Will and Lyra (and, of course, her dæmon, Pantalaimon) uneasily embark on a great adventure and head into greater tragedy.
As Pullman moves between his young warriors and the witch Serafina Pekkala, the magnetic, ever-manipulative Mrs. Coulter, and Lee Scoresby and his hare dæmon, Hester, there are clear signs of approaching war and earthly chaos. There are new faces as well. The author introduces Oxford dark-matter researcher Mary Malone; the Latvian witch queen Ruta Skadi, who "had trafficked with spirits, and it showed"; Stanislaus Grumman, a shaman in search of a weapon crucial to the cause of Lord Asriel, Lyra's father; and a serpentine old man whom Lyra and Pan can't quite place. Also on hand are the Specters, beings that make cliff-ghasts look like rank amateurs.
Throughout, Pullman is in absolute control of his several worlds, his plot and pace equal to his inspiration. Any number of astonishing scenes--small- and large-scale--will have readers on edge, and many are cause for tears. "You think things have to be possible," Will demands. "Things have to be true!" It is Philip Pullman's gift to turn what quotidian minds would term the impossible into a reality that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. --Kerry Fried
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy now appears in sophisticated trade paperback editions, each title embossed within a runic emblem of antiqued gold. The backdrop of The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials, Book I sports a midnight blue map of the cosmos with the zodiacal ram at its center. The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass carry similarly intriguing cover art, and all three titles offer details not seen in the originals: in Compass and Knife, for example, Pullman's stamp-size b&w art introduces each chapter; Spyglass chapters open with literary quotes from Blake, the Bible, Dickinson and more.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
edition.
A Customer
I snatched up the Subtle Knife from my | 
16/01/2000
16/01/2000
it is, as mentioned before, what Milton's work was about in the first place. What if Satan has finally decided his army has been built up enough for another battle with God? Or, if he sees Asriel (who, as the reader from Pennsylvania so cleverly mentioned, might be an incarnation of Azreal (Death), who is Satan's son) preparing for a battle, and decides to send his support? There are other issues which critics complain about, but they've already been discussed in previous reviews and this is getting a bit too lengthy already =). At this point in the trilogy, we don't know Asriel's true purpose, we don't know what side Lyra is on, we don't know what is good or evil, in short, we can't judge. So please, from now on, try to see it from the viewpoint that Pullman is writing from, or at least reserve your judgement until the last book is published.
A Customer
When Dickens' novels were first serial |
11/06/1997
11/06/1997
- subatomic particles which correspond to the mysterious dark matter of modern astronomy. Will and Lyra meet in Cittagazze, a frightening world in which spectres suck the souls from adults, and thus the only fear children have is of growing up.
Reviewers of "The Golden Compass" made inevitable comparisons to Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. While it is difficult for any fantasy book to escape the long shadow of Frodo Baggins, the Dark Materials series admirably avoids the painful kitsch that so often mars Tolkien's work; Pullman's characters seldom burst into song or sigh as they contemplate a noble past where men and elves walked tall and... well, one gets the picture. Indeed, what sets Pullman apart from so many fellow fabulists is his respect for restrained, inventive language. For instance, the following passage describes a spell of invisibility: "True invisibility was impossible, of course; this was mental magic, a kind of fiercely held modesty that could make the spell worker not invisible but simply unnoticed."
I resisted the initial temptation to review the book immediately upon completing it; rather, I passed it off to a friend to compare her reaction with mine. We were in agreement on the verdict: "The Subtle Knife" ranks among the best modern books written in any genre. It is that good.
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