The Subtle Knife (1997)

*Premise spoilers, which spoils important points from The Golden Compass.*

I enjoyed The Golden Compass and found its ideas very interesting, but The Subtle Knife is the book that really got me excited about the His Dark Materials trilogy. As I neared the end of it, I made sure I had the third book on deck and ready to go, because I wanted to be able to jump straight into it.

At the end of The Golden Compass, Lyra’s “uncle” Asriel—in truth, her father—uses his research into Dust to create a “window” between worlds. This breakthrough came at a terrible cost, as Asriel severed a child and his dæmon, killing them, to do it. With little recourse, Lyra steps through the window, both to escape Magisterium forces who are chasing her and to hopefully learn more about Dust herself. Little does she know, a boy named Will in our world is discovering a window of his own. The two children meet one another in a third world, and although both are wary, they decide to trust and help each other on the adventure that follows.

I’m finding that it’s very tricky to write short summaries of the His Dark Materials books. Each installment packs in so much story, and beyond that, so much detail, that it’s hard to do it justice in brief. But this is a great book. The continued world-building—now worlds-building—is excellent. I especially like seeing how the same things have different names or different implications in the various worlds. In Lyra’s world, the Magisterium is obsessed with Dust, and because they’ve discovered that adults attract much more of it than children, they perform horrific experiments on children to study this phenomenon. The children in Cittágazze, where Lyra and Will meet, don’t know anything about Dust, but they know that the dangerous Spectres prowling their city can only harm adults, not children. And in Will’s/our world, there’s little outward signs of the fantastical, but there are still those who study similar principles in their own way.

But as much as I like all the ideas and inventiveness, I love The Subtle Knife for the dynamics between the characters. Lyra and Will are immediately interesting together—both are children who’ve had a lot placed on their shoulders, but in distinct ways and situations. This means that sometimes they’re on exactly the same page, while on others, they get on each other’s nerves and come to shouting matches over the best path forward. As they steal between worlds, it’s great to watch them learn how to work together and trust each other. And that’s before you even get into the fact that Lyra has a dæmon and Will doesn’t; as she grapples with the disturbingly unnatural sight of seeing a human without a dæmon, he struggles to comprehend that Lyra’s soul is a talking, shapeshifting animal that runs around outside her body. Talk about cultural differences!

The other characters, both old and new, have plenty to sink their teeth into as well. We go deeper into Mrs. Coulter, who remains awful but fascinating, and I’m charmed by new character Mary Malone in Will’s world. The first book namedrops Stanislaus Grumman, a well-known explorer and shaman from Lyra’s world, but here, he takes on greater importance to the plot, as the aeronaut Lee Scoresby is sent on a mission to find him.

This is a fantastic book: thought-provoking, amusing, exciting, and emotional. With the second installment of a trilogy, there are often two possible paths. Either it winds up feeling like a bridge story, building on what came before and setting up what’s to come but appreciated more as part of the whole instead of on its own, or it levels up from the first story, taking everything that was great about it and making it even better, giving us more of our favorite characters while also introducing wonderful new ones. The Subtle Knife definitely takes the latter path!

Warnings

Violence, disturbing imagery, drinking, mild language, and strong thematic elements.