Book 23: The Subtle Knife

This book actually had me going along swimmingly at first. I love urban fantasy, and part of the action was centered in our own universe. But this sequel to The Golden Compass suffered from a lot of the same problems as its predecessor.

My biggest beef with the second book (and what I have read so far of the third) is that the main character, Lyra, becomes such a wuss. She totally lets Will, arguably the main character in the second book, walk all over her and dictate what she should and shouldn’t do, which is way out of character from the first book.

And the theme of “religion sucks” starts to pervade the series more clearly in this second book, though Pullman doesn’t start pounding us over the head with that theme until early in the third book.