The Subtle Knife

The second piece in any trilogy - or more specifically, the middle act in a three act story - is often the most thematically and philosophically compelling part. The world, conflict, and principal characters are introduced in the first piece while the final showdown and its aftermath occur in the third and final installment. That leaves the middle section of the tale as the one that clarifies the stakes and questions, or at least explains, the motives of those involved. The third movie in The Lord of the Rings may be the most grand and epic in scale and in length, but it's that Helm's Deep battle (and specifically, the preparations for the battle) in the second movie that earns the most emotional resonance with the audience. We see old, wounded men and what must be eight-year-old boys getting fitted for armor as their female loved ones, scared shitless, must wait out the battle underground with no real idea of what's going on. We realize, here, that this is humanity's last stand against the evil forces, and even though we can really just jump right into the third movie from the first one without missing a whole lot of plot points, doing so would rob us of enough emotional beats to make the story's climactic resolution more or less irrelevant. If you've seen the movies, you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't, you really should. Anyway, I just finished the second of three books that comprise His Dark Materials after reading the first one (The Golden Compass) more than nineteen months ago. When posting about that book, I lamented that it wasn't very exciting until the very end, and by that point I had become so bored by the book that I wasn't quite sure which characters were doing what, or even what the overall conflict was. Before starting this sequel, I took a brief Internet-based refresher course on the characters and events of the first book. And as I alluded to above, this book was far more thematically heavy - and thus more interesting - than that first one. Where there were Gypsy caravans and polar bear fights in the first book, there were biblical allegories and parallel dimensions in the second. The Golden Compass contained a series of adventures and misadventures that the main character went through on her way to the deep Arctic where she intended to investigate a mysterious substance called "dust." Here, in The Subtle Knife, we actually learn some useful things about this "dust" and also learn of a much larger conflict involving rebellious angels plotting to assassinate God. Other thematic territory, such as childhood innocence and coming of age, is also explored. I can't pretend I found myself any more invested in the characters here in the second book, but at least the story overall seems to be shaping up to something larger than I was giving it credit for a year and a half ago. Good. I did say, even back then, that I'd reserve final judgment on the series until I'd completed it in its entirety. I look forward to reading the next book, but can't promise I'll get to it any time soon.