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The Subtle Knife His Dark Materials Book Two…
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The Subtle Knife His Dark Materials Book Two (original 1997; edition 1998)

by Philip Pullman

Series: His Dark Materials (2)

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24,797353136 (4.05)416
As the boundaries between worlds begin to dissolve, Lyra and her daemon help Will Parry in his search for his father and for a powerful, magical knife.
Member:StefanNijenhuis
Title:The Subtle Knife His Dark Materials Book Two
Authors:Philip Pullman
Info:Ballantine Books (1998), Paperback
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

Work Information

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (1997)

  1. 82
    The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (Leishai)
    Leishai: Also a story about fantasy with another world
  2. 52
    Wizard and Glass by Stephen King (levasssp)
    levasssp: or any of the Dark Tower series...similarities include an ability to travel between different, but closely related, worlds through portals or doors. Additionally, there are themes of religion, good/bad and questions about "essence" that are similar in both series.… (more)
  3. 21
    The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (Leishai)
  4. 11
    Lycidas by Christoph Marzi (Leishai)
1990s (8)
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» See also 416 mentions

English (335)  Spanish (4)  Italian (2)  Dutch (2)  German (2)  French (2)  Danish (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  All languages (349)
Showing 1-5 of 335 (next | show all)
Very good, but I took one star off because of how upset I was when certain characters were killed off (in spite of already knowing about one from the HBO show). ( )
  Dances_with_Words | Jan 6, 2024 |
I apparently remembered nothing about this book (other than that Will's from our world), so a reread was well overdue.

Pieces move on the board to and from worlds, including our own (though contemporary at the time, it was funny to me to see that Mary Malone had floppy discs for The Cave and with John Parry's letters dated 1985). Maybe because it's partially in our world and doesn't share the fantastic magic of shapeshifting daemons and panserbjorn, but I didn't find The Subtle Knife nearly as compelling. Still, it's doing setup for spectacular showdowns in The Amber Spyglass so... it's a middle trilogy book!

Also, as with The Golden Compass- awfully dark for a children's book. ( )
  Daumari | Dec 28, 2023 |
As the series progresses, it seems the author is struggling to hold all the parts together. One unbelievable coincidence after another spoils the otherwise beautiful storytelling, and the unending teasers for knowledge the adults have, but refuse to say, gives you a very frustrating position of being inside someone's thoughts without understanding the vocabulary. ( )
  snare | Dec 13, 2023 |
I don't actually mind the fact that this book does not concentrate on Lyra or even start with her as I wasn't that taken with her character anyway; too perfect/loved by all for no particular reason, for a start. I also quite like Will's resourcefulness and care of his mother. And having split up the characters at the end of the first volume, Pullman has to follow their separate narratives.

What I don't like is the level of info-dumping and polemic that has crept in with this second volume. Some of it is risible, such as the 'explanation' of the Dust-energy talking to the scientist on her computer. Pullman obviously has no knowledge of computers whatsoever (speaking as someone with an IT background) and the scene where the scientist goes home and rustles up a program - on floppy disk (I know this book was written a while back, but even then USB sticks existed) - in a few hours, that is capable of somehow magically producing a character/English typed interface to talk to the Dust is far more difficult for me to suspend disbelief over than witches or talking bears. I didn't even believe the previous nonsense where just putting a headset on enabled Lyra to produce patterns on the screen that were a form of communication with Dust that she could understand. Basically this whole idea is a form of magic and Pullman might as well have made it such, because it just doesn't work.

The other thing that majorly jars for me is the idea that the Dust, being sentient energy, is somehow also angels which are individual people with rather flawed characters into the bargain. How can sentient energy particles, which settle on people and somehow enhance their intelligence if I've got that right - that were responsible for the evolution of homo sapiens into a reasoning creature - also be actual lifeforms? Just couldn't equate the two.

There is also quite a bit of unpleasant violence in this book and things that don't make sense - why does Mrs Coulter murder one of her allies and then go on the run? If she wants to kill Lyra, as it now seems she does, there are plenty of people in the church that want to do that too, so why not let them handle it? And what is really daft are all the changed premises: for example, Lord Asriel now seems to be centuries old, at least he has been building a huge fortress in another world with loads of warriors, equipment etc, helping him out at huge expense - how was that done if he had to create a bridge to other worlds at the end of book 1? There are now loads of leftover windows between worlds, when to create one he had to murder a child, again at the end of book 1, so why did he have to go to all that trouble? And it is just plain daft that Mrs Coulter can not only magically control the Spectres who turn any other adult into a zombie, she can even give them the power of flight to go after the witches Actually there are a lot of daft things in this book - the witches seem to just stand around cluelessly to allow enemies to creep up and get them, on a regular basis.

While continuing the rant, I must note the character issues. Lyra in particular undergoes a personality transplant, and becomes a complete wimp shortly after meeting Will. Pullman seems to succumb to the idea that girls when they hit puberty and start fancying boys, as she seems to be doing, pretend to be dumb so as not to frighten off the boys with their intelligence or other abilities. Maybe this happens in real life, but it is a huge disappointment for a lot of fans of the first book. As I wasn't sold on her character, it wasn't such a problem for me, but I just found it rather odd. This passivity also means that when the witches are discussing Lord Asriel and whether they should support him, and one tells the others that he opposes the evil church who do heinous things such as cutting children from their daemons, she doesn't even bother to tell them that he murdered her friend Roger in the same way to make his bridge!

It also means that, very conveniently plotwise, she now does not consult the alethiometer which would give her all sorts of answers that would cause issues for the author, because Will wouldn't like it. How would her being able to give him crucial information upset him? That seems very poor plotting to me. Maybe Pullman regretted making the alethiometer and Lyra's ability to read it too powerful. So he had to have this very unconvincing reason for her not checking it, to prevent them finding out things that would mess up the plot if they knew about them.

I was also very annoyed that he killed off a couple of just about my favourite characters Lee and Hester whose presence up till then had made the book more bearable. And although it might be like real life, the killing off of Will's dad just as they've met and before they can have a proper reconciliation is a cheat to the reader who has been expected to root for Will's quest to find his dad through the whole book. It is also very silly that a witch is brought in who apparently hates his dad enough to kill him on sight just because he once turned down her offer of a romp in the hay.

The angels are just plain silly with all their bickering.

The main problem with this book as a lot of other people have observed is the anti-church, anti-god polemic that takes over. Though I'm not objecting on religious grounds, but on the lack of logic and consistency. It's rather odd for a self professed atheist such as Pullman to write something like this: I could understand it, if the book was about a corrupt church which wields power in the name of a non-existent god, since atheists don't believe god exists. But here, god is apparently a baddie who has to be killed off. This seems a very odd preoccupation for an atheist. He could oppose religion itself consistently with his beliefs, but he actually says that god is real when he believes he/she/it doesn't exist at all. Seems an odd thing for him to expend so much outrage about, in that case. So the whole structure for me is increasingly the tottering tower of cards that I sensed underlying the first book. So much impossibility is piled higher and higher, that huge cracks and inconsistencies and changed premises are breaking through everywhere, rather like windows between worlds.



( )
1 vote kitsune_reader | Nov 23, 2023 |
Good sequel. Almost as fun as the first book. ( )
  nogomu | Oct 19, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 335 (next | show all)
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.
 

» Add other authors (21 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Pullman, Philipprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Bailey, PeterIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bützow, HeleneTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Nielsen, CliffCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Peterson, EricCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Rohmann, EricCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ströle, WolframÜbersetzersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tutino, AlfredoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Will tugged at his mother's hand and said, "Come on, come on..." But his mother hung back.
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“I’m only an ignorant aëronaut. I’m so damn ignorant I believed it when I was told that shamans had the gift of flight, for example. Yet here’s a shaman who hasn’t.”

“Oh, but I have.”

“How d’you make that out?”

The balloon was drifting lower, and the ground was rising. […]

“I needed to fly,” said Grumman, “so I summoned you, and here I am, flying.”
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As the boundaries between worlds begin to dissolve, Lyra and her daemon help Will Parry in his search for his father and for a powerful, magical knife.

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