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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Definitely the best book in the trilogy. (  )1   screamingbanshee | Oct 1, 2009 |  In my review of The Golden Compass, I said it was "the most well-executed YA fantasy novel I've ever read" and that the opening was "stunning"; The Subtle Knife isn't that good, but the opening is still pretty great. The Golden Compass dumps us into a foreign world with no warning, but The Subtle Knife dumps us into our world-- except we still have no idea what's going on! Who's Will Parry? What's wrong with his mum? Who are these men after him? It's gripping almost as much as the first book, but unfortunately it's downhill from there. Whereas The Golden Compass took in half the planet, The Subtle Knife confines our heroes to swapping between the worlds of Citagazze and Will's Oxford. Meanwhile, a bunch of other people are doing all the interesting things. The book never quite overcomes this weird split, which leaves Will and Lyra looking decidedly pointless in their own book. Of course, it's still great-- Pullman can write, Citagazze is chilling, Will is a great addition, Mary Malone is awesome, and Lyra will always be Lyra-- but it's definitely the weakest book of the trilogy. 3 Stevil2001 | Sep 24, 2009 | Second book in Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Will Parry is a tough, quiet, and smart boy who lives in our own world and finds himself an integral part of the drama unfolding between all of the worlds of the universe. He meets Lyra Silvertongue by accident and together they work to unravel the mysteries of a coming war between good and evil. Wonderful writing, interesting story, and great characters. The Christian/catholic thread gains within the plot, but if this doesn't bother you either way then keep reading! ( )1 renee_desroberts | Sep 12, 2009 | Lyra finds Will, a boy from our universe, in Cittàgazze, a universe ravaged by soul-sucking Specters. There's more mythic journey stuff — sacrifice, fighting and finally knowing one's father, and an epic gathering battle across universes. Most of The Subtle Knife operates at about the level of Dogma (the movie) — if you have the basic Biblical story in mind you can follow it. Toward the end, however, I start to feel as if my high school myth and bible class isn't quite enough preparation to understand all the references. (  ) greenstarfish | Sep 1, 2009 | The only fault I can find with The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman, is its readership classification (ages 10-12). A children's novel this isn't. Plainly the marketing team didn't know what to do with a novel that put forward a child as the main character, erroneously assumed that Pullman's very complex and ancient concepts were the stuff of children's literature. Beautifully written, well-developed characters, and tight plot, The Subtle Knife expands upon the concepts briefly hinted in The Golden Compass, that is, the concept of Original Sin and a repeat of the ancient battle between the bene elim (the angels known as The Watchers) and The Creator. In my opinion this is some of the richest fantasy to have been published in decades, and is destined to become a classic alongside Milton's Paradise Lost and Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. By all means let your children read this. Most of all, read it yourself. (  )1 fiverivers | Aug 21, 2009 | 
 J. R. R. Tolkien, the granddaddy of modern high fantasy, asserted that the best fantasy writing is marked by ''arresting strangeness.'' Philip Pullman measures up; his work is devilishly inventive. His worlds teem with angels, witches, humans, animal familiars, talking bears and Specters, creatures resembling deadly airborne jellyfish... Put Philip Pullman on the shelf with Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, at least until we get to see Volume 3.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0679879250, Hardcover)With The Golden Compass 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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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