What's cool about The Subtle Knife is how Pullman throws away pretty much everything from The Golden Compass: not just the world -- a move foreshadowed at the end of the previous book -- but most of the characters, for most of the time, as well. Lyra doesn't appear for a good 50 pages and even then, we see her through Will's eyes. The structure is completely different, too. Instead of another heroic quest, we get a series of small episodes, in which Will and Lyra set out to solve problem after problem. Meanwhile, in bits and pieces, we see what's going on in the worlds around them. When those larger events finally catch up with Will and Lyra, the result is a series of jaw-dropping reversals, setting up one of the best cliffhanger endings I can name.
I was thinking I was going to have more to say about this, but can't think of anything. It's possibly technically the best book of the three, kind of surprising: middles of trilogies tend to be clunky.
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