Book Addicts Anonymous

Having slipped through the window in the Aurora Borealis, the intrepid Lyra finds herself in a new world where she arrives in Cittagazze, a beautiful yet haunted city inhabited by soul-eating specters and run by children. Here she finds an ally in Will Parry, a 12-year-old boy from our own world who, in search of his missing father, stumbled into the strange world via another window leading from his own Oxford. Together, the pair forge ahead on a perilous journey between worlds teeming with witches, angels, and treachery to uncover a deadly secret: a weapon of extraordinary and devastating power. With each step they cannot overcome the greatest threat of all, and walk towards the shattering truth of their own destinies...


If you've never read the first book of the His Dark Materials trilogy, you're not going to fancy reading The Subtle Knife. Bottom line. They are very intertwined and reading it before its predecessor - Northern Lights (or in the US, The Golden Compass) - will get you nowhere fast.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It was a bit strange, to be frank. None of the alleged Church bashing from the first book bothered me and while it's continued to a degree here, that's really not it. Though I've read both books and will definitely read the third, I wouldn't put it on my top ten list.

His Dark Materials