so as i’ve said in previous posts, i’m reading through Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. i’ve just completed the second book, A Subtle Knife. if you’ve read my post on The Golden Compass, you will remember that i really enjoyed that book. i thought it was a well-written suspense/adventure story and had all the makings of a great novel.

however, having finished the second book, i am less enthusiastic about the story as a whole. where The Golden Compass is fresh and unpredictable, The Subtle Knife suffers from many bouts of sluggishness and complete predictability. most of the way through the book it felt as if reading this part of the story was merely a means to an end, a necessary slow point that has to set up what’s to come in final book. perhaps that’s why this second part of the story is the shortest of the three? whatever the reason, The Subtle Knife was not nearly as enjoyable as The Golden Compass.

(if you don’t want to be spoiled, read no further)

this book, naturally, picks up where the first one left off and introduces a new character straight away. young Will, a murderer on the run, finds an open window into another world and soon runs into Lyra who has found herself in the same “another world” while trying to catch up with her father, Lord Asriel. the two children are virtually inseparable from that point on and find themselves, as children are wont to do, in a number of precarious situations and adventures. the point of this part of the story does not come clear until a little over halfway through the book, where the children are charged with the task of recovering a mysterious knife in exchange for Lyra’s stolen alethiometer. come to find out, this “subtle knife,” as it’s called is the instrument responsible for releasing Dust (which, if you’re unfamiliar with its significance to the story, you can read the post mentioned above on The Golden Compass), and is pretty much the sharpest two-edged blade in all the untold numbers of universes of Pullman’s story. this knife has the ability to cut windows leading from one world to another and even possesses the power, at least in theory, to be the one instrument that can destroy the Authority, or God.

and that’s…..it. it takes nearly 250 pages for that to be accomplished, but, again, we don’t even find out about the knife until over halfway through those 250 pages. there’s action and intrigue in the book, to be sure, but it’s just not very compelling. characters are introduced and then forgotten about, the story meanders and drags, a lot of the dialogue, particularly in regards to the church, is extremely forced, and, as i said earlier, pretty much everything that happens is painfully predictable.

i was also surprised that there wasn’t much that furthered Pullman’s atheist agenda in this book. there was some stuff to be sure, but most of it was just rehashing what was said in the first book. it’s definitely becoming more and more clear that Pullman’s main contention with Christianity is his perceived suppression of what is good and enjoyable. one of Pullman’s characters, early in the book, states, “it’s tried to suppress and control every natural impulse….That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling” (336). along the same lines, later in the book, the same character goes on a similar rant, this time directed at God, or the Authority, in which she claims that he set up this religion as a means “to destroy the joys and truthfulness of life” (496).

i find these two statements both fascinating and ridiculous at the same time. fascinating because i’m always interested in the self-made reasons that people use to justify their atheism. ridiculous because this argument makes no rational or logical (paramounts of atheism) sense whatsoever. it must be kept in mind that Pullman is actually attacking Christianity in the real world through these fictional stories. so then it is reasonable to transfer the arguments of his characters to the author.

so, recapping, Pullman’s entire argument against the Christian God, so far, has been that God is a big meanie who tells people not to do the things that seem “natural” and “good” and “joyful” to them. putting aside the complete untruth of this for the time being, one’s first question should be, “well where does the definition of what is ‘good,’ etc. come from? what is the standard of such?” for the atheist, authority begins and ends with an individual’s mind. “natural impulses,” as Pullman describes them in his book, are good, and right, and true, and must be pursued. but this makes no sense, does it? what if i had a “natural impulse” to murder Philip Pullman? must i act on that? God and Christianity tell me that such actions and feelings are wrong and sinful, so, following Pullman’s argument, those actions must be good and joyful! Pullman may then say that those actions are not “natural impulses,” but he would be unable to prove such a statement, especially when it is the individual’s mind that becomes one’s ultimate authority. of course this devolves into abject relativism, and the practical result would end in utter chaos.

there are other things that could be said about a few other anti-Christian statements in this book, but it seems to me that it would be a waste of time to do so. Pullman’s arguments are not well-made and most of them are simply straw men that are easily blown over and dismissed. it’s always amusing to me when atheists get angry about Christians trying to force their beliefs on others, when that’s exactly what Pullman is attempting to achieve in this series of books. less funny is the fact that he is attempting to do so under the guise of children’s books. but that’s a different post for a different day.