#18 The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

I must admit, it was the utterly atrocious jacket art of this sequel to the Golden Compass which made me read it ahead of the next Artemis Fowl book. But it was good enough that I returned to the Half-Price Books where my friend Chris first put The Golden Compass in my hands almost a year ago to purchase a copy of it and a copy of the final installment of the His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Amber Spyglass.



I don't want to explain the plot of this book, I don't know that it would make any sense to anyone who hasn't read the first part of the trilogy and if they have, then I'm just going to ruin the book by revealing spoilers within this text. So, here's as vague a review as musterable: there's some dust, some rifts between dimensions, angels and witches and ballooning, some bloodthirsty kids, and a very sharp knife.

Under most circumstances I wouldn't take issue with spoiling a book for someone, but these books are not so exceptionally well-written to make them worth reading except to experience the plot development.

Therefore, I will make this a brief review and say that the quality of this book is probably going to lead me to recommend the whole trilogy to my sisters and other people I know who enjoy young adult fantasy. But that is contingent upon the quality of the third installment, whose review will soon be featured here.

posted by Gabe @ 11:48 PM