内容简介

Book Description

Lyra and her daemon return as she and 12-year-old Will Parry are in a desperate flight for Will's life. They are drawn closer to Will's father and to the Subtle Knife, a deadly, magical, ancient tool that cuts windows between worlds. Through it all, the pair are drawn deeper and deeper into a fierce battle they may not survive.

Amazon.com

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 d?mons 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 d?mon, 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 d?mon, 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

From Publishers Weekly

In a starred review, PW said, "More than fulfilling the promise of The Golden Compass, this second volume in the His Dark Materials trilogy starts off at a heart-thumping pace and never slows down." Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

From School Library Journal

Grade 5 Up. A direct continuation of the epic fantasy begun in The Golden Compass (Knopf, 1996). Will Parry must find his father, who disappeared while exploring the far North. Mysterious strangers are hounding his mother for information about him. After Will accidentally kills one of them, he runs away, right through a window into another world. There he meets Lyra Silvertongue and her daemon, Pantalaimon, as well as travelers from yet another world. Lyra and her truth-telling alethiometer are soon enlisted in Will's quest, even as Lyra continues to seek the true nature of the mysterious Dust that is causing upheavals in her world. A desperate battle with inhabitants of the intermediate world brings Will the subtle knife, a magical totem of his own, which will protect Will and Lyra while bringing them closer to the end of this part of their quest. The action takes place in Will's world (which is also our own), as well as on Lyra's and the intermediate world. As in the first book, the stakes are high and the action is rapid and occasionally violent. The philosophical nature of the quest becomes clearer as various characters explain the possible relationships among Dust, the bridges between worlds, angels, supreme beings, and cosmic forces. This may be treading on dangerous ground for traditional religious thinkers?the essential nature of the supreme being is not necessarily positive?but high-fantasy enthusiasts will find much to follow and reflect on here. The Subtle Knife ends with even more of a cliff-hanger than The Golden Compass, and fans will eagerly await book three for the final resolution.

Susan L. Rogers, Chestnut Hill Academy, PA

From Booklist

The epic adventure continues as the plot thickens in the second riveting book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, which began with the much heralded The Golden Compass, Booklist's Top of the List in youth fiction for 1996. This time, the story begins in our world with Will, a boy who escapes his pursuers by going through a window into another world, a world plagued by soul-sucking specters, where he encounters Lyra and her demon, Pantalaimon. The two youngsters join forces, moving between worlds searching for the mysterious phenomenon called Dust and for Will's long-lost father. By losing two fingers in a battle with a madman, Will becomes a warrior and the bearer of the subtle knife, a weapon that, like Lyra's truth-telling alethiometer, is a talisman as well, and, like Lyra, Will proves to be a pivotal figure in the looming battle for the universe. Often the middle book in a trilogy is the weakest; such is not the case here despite some incidences of awkward explanations inserted as asides or as part of the narrative. It's the character development as well as the relentless pace on several fronts--that of Will, Lyra, the witches, Will's father, and others--and a couple of gruesome incidents that make this a resoundingly successful sequel. The cliff-hanger of an ending will leave readers desperate for the next installment.

Sally Estes

From Kirkus Reviews

The powerful second installment in the His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, which began with The Golden Compass (1996), continues the chronicling of Lyra Silvertongue's quest to find the origins of Dust--the very stuff of the universe. The first chapter is vintage Pullman: gorgeous imagery, pulse-pounding action, the baiting of readers' affections as they meet Will, 12, who is trying to protect his emotionally fragile mother and to locate his lost father, an explorer who vanished years before. Instead, Will finds a window into another world, where Lyra and her daemon have also tumbled. That world holds the talisman of the subtle knife, which can cut through anything, even the space between worlds. It wounds Will, but he is bound to it by a destiny neither he nor Lyra (nor readers) yet understand. The witches of Lyra's world, the scientists of Will's, the passionately evil Mrs. Coulter (Lyra's mother), and Lyra's champion Lee Scoresby seek the source of the disorder in the worlds and shimmering spaces that connect them. Angels that bless and Specters that eat the wills of adults appear; tantalizing glimpses of the past and future abound; the whole is presented in a rush of sensuous detail that moves and entrances. Pullman has so intricately woven the textures of the two books that the outlines of the first are clearly recapitulated in the second, making it possible to read this one alone. But as it, too, ends in a tremendous cliffhanger, most readers will seek out the first volume while they eagerly await the third. (First printing of 75,000; author tour) (Fiction. 12+)