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Will stumbles through a window into the abandoned city of Città gazze—a world overrun by terrifying, soul-eating specters. Here, he finds the subtle knife: a blade so sharp it can cut windows between worlds. While Lyra loses her ability to read the alethiometer (a consequence of puberty and the onset of "Dust"), Will gains the burden of the knife.
The second volume is a radical tonal shift. While Northern Lights was an arctic adventure, The Subtle Knife is a multiversal noir. We are introduced to , a boy from our world (Oxford, England) who has just killed a man to protect his schizophrenic mother. philip pullman his dark materials books
In the books, "The Church" (the Magisterium) is institutionally evil. They torture children, suppress knowledge, and kill free thought. The archangel Metatron is a bureaucratic tyrant. The "Authority" is not the Creator, but an impostor. Will stumbles through a window into the abandoned
This is the longest, strangest, and most controversial book in the "Philip Pullman His Dark Materials books" collection. It is also the most beautiful. The second volume is a radical tonal shift
In 2017, Pullman returned to Lyra’s world with The Book of Dust , a planned trilogy that acts as both an "equel"—happening before, during, and after the original events.
The trilogy has won numerous accolades, including the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Carnegie Medal. It is often compared to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia , though Pullman wrote it as a humanistic response to Lewis’s religious allegories. While some religious groups have labeled it anti-Christian, Pullman himself has stated the work is a critique of the abuses of organized power rather than faith itself.
Perhaps the most brilliant narrative device in the His Dark Materials books is the dæmon. Every human in Lyra’s world has one. For children, dæmons change shape fluidly (reflecting the potential of childhood). For adults, dæmons settle into a single animal form that reflects the person’s true nature.