The Subtle Knife

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. (Amazon.com)

A worthy second enstallment. I enjoyed it as much as the first. Will is a great addition. He is so strong and brave and his love for his mother is inspiring. His magic artifact is terrible and amazing all at once. The different worlds are described wonderfully.

This second novel does go a bit more into the anti-religous aspect of things and sure there's some sacreligous things mentioned, but once again if you take it for what it is (a fantasy novel) then there's no reason to take offense. So again I enjoyed the book, but as with the first, I do not find it a childrens story at all. It is full of things that young children wouldn't understand and includes things such as violence, death, and sex. Not terribly detailed, but enough that I wonder how anyone would ever think this was a story for children.

So a good story for adults, but would need severe editing to be a children's story.