The Subtle Knife

Our Review

The Subtle Knife is the second book in His Dark Materials Trilogy. If you haven’t read the first book, The Northern Lights, then you can find the review here.

Will is 12 years old and he has just killed a man. The man came in the night looking for something that once belonged to Will’s missing father. Will doesn’t know what it is but he knows he must protect it and his mother at all costs.

Will is used to looking after his mother, he has been doing it ever since he was a small child and he realised that she wasn’t like other mothers. Earlier that day he had taken his mum to stay with his old piano teacher because she was the only grown up he could think of who would keep her safe and not send her to an institution.

When Will takes his mother to Mrs Cooper, his piano teacher, it is the first glimpse we have of the way other people view Will and his mother.

“Mrs Cooper looked at the woman with the untidy hair and the distracted half-smile, and at the boy with the fierce unhappy glare in his eyes, the tight-set lips, the jutting jaw. And then she saw that Miss Parry, Will’s mother had put make-up on one eye but not the other. And she hadn’t noticed. And neither had Will. And she hadn’t noticed. And neither had Will. Something was wrong.”

When Will returns to the house he knows that the men will come and that he has to find the green leather writing case that once belonged to his father, but he doesn’t know where it can be and goes to sleep. When he wakes up he knows where the case is, and he knows the men are in the house.

After Will kills the man he knows he can’t stay and has to go on the run. When Will flees the house, he takes with him a carrier bag containing his mother’s purse, a letter from a lawyer, a road map of Southern England, chocolate, toothpaste, clean clothes and the writing case.

Whilst he is escaping he sees a cat disappear through a transparent patch of space and realises at once it leads to another world.

His journey takes him on a trip to this other world and brings him into contact with a strange and fierce girl named Lyra.

By her side, Will, will discover an incredibly powerful weapon and they will both take a step closer to their destiny.

Our Final Rating...

Sun, 21st January 2018