The Subtle Knife

Title: The Subtle Knife [amazon]
Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Scholastic (2005)
Pages: 368
Book Number: 19

I finished up The Subtle Knife today, the second book in the His Dark Materials series. After having read and enjoyed The Golden Compass, I was looking forward to see where the plot was taken in The Subtle Knife.

The things I complained about in The Golden Compass - namely, the main plot seeming to move a bit slowly, particularly information regarding Dust - have been “corrected” in the sequel. While I’m still not entirely clear on what Dust is, what’s going on overall is fleshed out a lot in The Subtle Knife. Specifically, a war is getting ready to be waged, between “rebels” - Lord Asriel, rebel angels, Will and others - against the Authority, or God. As one reviewer at amazon.com put it, there’s nothing subtle about this knife. Pullman obviously has an axe to grind in regards to the tyranny of the Church, its lies and deceptions. I’m not sure where Mrs. Coulter and Co. tie in with this war and the Church, but I’m sure that’ll be clarified in the last book of the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass. I must say - I’m anxious to see how the war against God goes. I think it’s an intriguing plot idea.

I was a bit bummed to find that armored bears weren’t in The Subtle Knife at all - not even Iorek Byrnison. His name popped up a few times, when Lyra and Will were talking, but besides that, he wasn’t in the book at all. Instead of lots of bears, in The Subtle Knife, there were lots of witches, specifically Serafina Pekkala and her group. I have to admit (and perhaps this is how Pullman pictures them) - from his description of the witches, I see them looking a bit like Sarah Sanderson (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) from Hocus Pocus. Sadly, I wasn’t able to find any decent pictures of that character online to share with you.

I’ve not looked into it, but I wonder if churches have raised hell (pun intended) about the His Dark Materials trilogy, similar to how they’ve raised hell over the Harry Potter series. I’ve seen news about a lot of different churches / religious groups banning the Harry Potter series, because it might teach kids “witchcraft” or “devil worshipping” or some other idiotic thing. I wonder what kind of uproar there’s going to be when the movies for Pullman’s books come out, and the main plot line turns out to be a war on God.

That should be interesting.