Rating: 
Summary: AS GOOD AS THE FIRST AND BEGGING FOR MORE!
Review: I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THIS BOOK IS OFTEN FOUND IN THE CHILDREN'S SECTION OF MOST BOOK STORES -- THE STORY AND CHARACTERS ARE VERY WELL DEVELOPED AND THE READING LEVEL IS NOT FOR SMALL CHILDREN. I COULDN'T WAIT TO READ THE SUBTLE KNIFE AND YET I RE-READ THE GOLDEN COMPASS ANYWAY JUST BEFORE DIVING INTO BOOK 2.
Rating:
Summary: Really, REALLY good book--for any fantasy/sci-fi fan.
Review: Will Parry's mom is, let's face it, loco in el cabeza, so he must hide her from the antagonizing men who demand the location of some letters Will's dad, John, sent to Will's mother. Afterward, Will returns to his house to find the men ransacking it. He accidentally kills one, and escapes. But he finds a new world in his desparate flight--one that he can hide in. There he finds Lyra, who is searching for answers--and revenge. Will becomes the bearer of an important artifact, one which will shape the destiny of both himself and Lyra, as well as the universe (all of them). Lyra also has an important fate, perhaps even more important than Will's, and together they embark on a journey full of fantasy and adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: This book was so beautiful, it even made me cry at one point (when Will finally meets his father, but he is then killed for the love of a witch). It was better than anything I ever expected from a sequel ... I felt like I was part of this imaginary world, I felt like I was seeing a part of the author's soul. I don't think this is a book for immature people ... whether children or adults. I think it is a breath of fresh air to read something so imaginative and so moving .... and adults who read only "adult" books are just as likely to misunderstand it as children who read "children's" books. By Tina Cortes (13 years old and proud of it)
Rating: 
Summary: Impressed but concerned where it is going
Review: When the blurb on The Golden Compass announced the following book in the trilogy would take place in "our world" I shuddered. Fantasy exists to free writers and readers from the burdens of mundane plausibility, and Pullman has showed himself such a master of this freedom that I wondered why he would want the burdens back. Luckily, in The Subtle Knife, after a couple of Chestertonian glimpses at "our world" from outside (and some not-so-deft science fiction) we're back with the mercurial Lyra in not one but two over-the-top fantasy worlds. Once again everything is sacrificed to headlong suspense and mounting awe with this incredibly ambitious (house-of-cards?) plot. Pullman's great virtue is his unpredicability in a genre where the final stances of authors are usually obvious from page one. But the real mystery now (since volume two breaks off rather than finishes) is how he can possibly finish the Satanic enterprise he has started: the revision of the towering myth erected by Milton, C.S.Lewis, and Madeline L'Engle. Pullman seems more a sentimentalist than moralist, and how the lighthearted rebellious Lyra will make a memorable dent on "man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree" without becoming mere satire (Monty Python and the Problem of Suffering?) is--well, an excellent reason to await volume three eagerly.
Rating:
Summary: Subtle and compelling - even better than the first book!
Review: Like so many others, I waited eagerly for the sequel to "Northern Lights", as the book is titled in England (why the name change for the American market, I wonder?) And it was worth the wait, though Lord knows how I'll endure the wait for the final volume! Many of the children I teach reacted with similar enthusiasm, as did my daughter aged ten - it is a children's book, as the Hobbit is - but not exclusively so. It's interesting to find religious objections in some of the reviews, as the complex web of religious references Pullman is building up is by no means a simple one-on-one critique of any Church of the present world and day. He's dealing with power, its abuse and creation, and its effecton those caught up in the endeavours of the already powerful to become more so - it's as much a political allegory as a religious one, I think. Will and Lyra, innocent children forced to give up most of their innocence, both deserted by the adults whose job it should have been to care for them, travel in and out of different worlds, fighting the burdens of responsibility placed on them. They contrast with the "natural" children of Cittagaze, who turn to savagery without adult influence. This is a book that kept me thinking all the way through, and to which I know I shall return time and time again. Not much point in entering anything else for the Carnegie medal in my opinion!
Rating:
Summary: Pullman has done it again, The Subtle Knife is excellent!
Review: The Subtle Knife is a terrific follow-up to The Golden Compass. Pullman is not just a great storyteller, he's a highly gifted writer. There's no need to push this book, just read The Golden Compass and you'll rush out to get the second book of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm somewhat disappointed.
Review: I agree with "Reader from Dallas." Where does Philip Pullman get off mounting, in a quote from another reader/reviewer, an << undisguised attack on the power and hypocrisy of organized religion in our own world>>? There may yet be a trick up his sleeve, and I hope so; but the confusion of good and evil in this second volume is very disappointing to a reader who loved THE GOLDEN COMPASS.
The idea of an all-out attack on "God" is ludicrous and ridiculous, to anyone with any true and exalted idea of what God is!
And it's so unfair. He talks, for instance, of genital mutilation by "the Church." Circumcision of baby boys is done by all Jews (are they monsters?) and here he talks of "to the South." Apparently (we can only guess) this is a reference to the so-called "female circumcision" practiced by members of =other= religions, not Jews, not the Christian Church. Placing it in another, supposedly parallel, world is no excuse.
Anyway, there are too many worlds, too many threads, in volume 2; it becomes cluttered. I also agree with several other readers that in general the meat here is too strong for children.
I'm hoping very much that volume 3 will be better, but at this point I am very disappointed.
Mary M. Stolzenbach
Rating:
Summary: Read this book. Thank me later.
Review: One of the most common blurbs encountered in a book review states that, "I couldn't put it down!" Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife went one step beyond this. At times I absolutely had to put it down and pace around the room a bit, just to work off some of the agitation caused by the story. This is an absolutely magical book, full of emotion, wonder, and almost unbearable suspense, fully living up to the promise of The Golden Compass. The third book of the trilogy can't be released soon enough to suit me. As a friend put it, "Now I know what it was like to have to wait for the third volume of Lord of the Rings!"
Rating:
Summary: This isn't your ordinary butter knife!
Review: 12-year-old Will Parry hasn't got a great life-- his mother is mentally ill, his father mysteriously vanished years ago, and he has to run away from home because of an accidental murder.
Lyra Silvertongue has just ended a large step in a journey of her own. She stumbles through an endless fog, armed only with an alethiometer, a magical instrument akin to a compass that will answer any question with truth; and her daemon Pantalaimon, a part of herself physically seperated that takes the form of an animal.
Both find themselves meeting in Cittagazze, a world that contains many dangerous secrets. Both have quests equally important, but the alethiometer reveals that they must journey together, resisting the schemes of devious Lord Boreal, insane Lord Asriel, evil Marisa Coulter, and the corrupt Church of Lyra's world; if they wish to succeed.
The sequel to "The Golden Compass" centers around a so-called "subtle knife" (thus the title), which cuts through any substance on one side of the blade...but the other side cuts windows through worlds, and that is why only brave Will Parry can accept it and become its' bearer.
Rating:
Summary: an excellent book (but not for anyone under 12)
Review: I loved both The Golden Compass and the Subtle Knife, although I agree that the trilogy should have been marketed as an adult fantasy. I plot is fast-paced, the characters are extremely likable, (although the girl is more interesting than the boy), and it had all the ingredients of a classic fantasy series--magic, mystery, and intrigue. I rate this trilogy right up there with Susan Cooper's newberry-winning Dark is Rising Sequence as the most entertaining thing I've read in an eternity.
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