Title: The Subtle Knife
Author: Philip Pullman
Genre: Fantasy, Adventure
Series: His Dark Materials #2
Pages: 288 pages
Synopsis:
Lost in a new world, Lyra finds Will—a boy on the run, a murderer—a worthy and welcome ally. For this is a world where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and witches share the skies with troops of angels.
Each is searching—Lyra for the meaning of Dark Matter, Will for his missing father—but what they find instead is a deadly secret, a knife of untold power. And neither Lyra nor Will suspects how tightly their lives, their loves, and their destinies are bound together… until they are split apart.
(from Goodreads)
My Thoughts:
The Subtle Knife continues right where The Golden Compass left off. If I’m being honest, I feel like this book is just as good as the first book!
The story works well, and I was interested in what was going on from beginning to end. The ending also had an interesting cliffhanger.
The Introduction of Will Parry made for a very interesting character and a great addition to this series. While it’s weird to introduce a very important main protagonist in the second novel of a trilogy, but Will Parry’s introduction was very well done. Will Parry’s relationship with Lyra is very interesting and their friendship grows pretty well in this book.
One of the best things I like about this book is Lee Scoresby’s Chapters. I really liked his chapters in this book. In the first book, Lee was an okay character, I didn’t hate him but I didn’t love this character. I felt his chapters were really fun and had a ton of action. No spoilers but I was so sad about his last chapter.
The main criticism I have about this book is I feel like the book could have expanded more on its world-building and Lore. Still no maps in this book? C’mon! Maps help make the worlds feel more real! And I wish we could have expanded a bit more on Cittigazze and its world (I was interested in it). As for lore I wanted to learn more about this Guild of the Torre degli Angeli, the book mentioned it but I was interested in learning more. I also wanted to learn more about the lore of The Subtle Knife, such as its history, and maybe more of who carried the knife before Will Parry.
This is more a nitpick, but in the Subtle Knife: Lord Asriel built a fortress and has a large army of millions. My question here is: How did you amass an army this quickly? Why did these choose to follow Lord Asriel? Wouldn’t it take years to build an army? It seems like he just got an army out of nowhere!
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was gripping and interesting from beginning to end. The Characters are still really good and it’s a very solid sequel.
Rating:
My Review of His Dark Materials:
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