The Golden Compass might have been slightly better as a novel, taken individually. But The Subtle Knife has what you want in the middle book in a three book series - growth in the themes and stylization, intriguing new characters, new mysteries, and lots and lots of action. To borrow from Gregory Maguire's review:
Children will read ''The Subtle Knife'' as an adventure story rather than as an extended riff on liberty and free will derived from Books 5 and 6 of ''Paradise Lost.'' And adventure is abundant: cowboy shootouts, exploding dirigibles, break-ins at English country homes, tortures and assassinations, communication with spirits on computer monitors. The story gallops with such ferocious momentum that one almost forgives such cliffhangers as watching Mary Malone, a former nun turned Oxford scientist, disappear through a window into a new world, never to be heard from again -- yet.
I'm enjoying these books, and I might not read book 3 for a couple of weeks, simply because I don't really want to be done with the series. The ideas (about science, religion, adulthood, human motivations, power and ethics) are treated with unusual depth (well I presume that to be the case - but I'll have to finish book 3 to be sure). And they are extraordinarily well-written books. Not just in the prose, but in the use of a variety of key design points that allow for an unusual level of tension, excitment and meaning in the text (like the overlapping worlds). I recommend them.
Posted by armand at June 4, 2006 10:16 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Books