The Subtle Knife
The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) Philip Pullman,
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
ISBN: 0440238145
Edition: Paperback; 2003-09-09
Summary:
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
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