Mary and her partner Oliver Payne have discovered a substance they refer to as shadows, which shares many characteristics of Dust. Mary Malone, who is a specialist in the interstellar particles known as dark matter. Using Lyra’s alethiometer, the children find their way to Dr. Lyra and will eventually choose to return through the anomaly to Will’s Oxford, where Will hopes to find information on his missing father, arctic explorer John Perry, and Lyra hopes to find a physicist who can help her learn more about Dust. They say the city is called Cittàgazze (or Ci’gazze), and that its is overrun with shadowy creatures known as specters, which feed on the souls of the adults in the area, leaving them empty and existing in sort of a walking coma. Lee is looking for the famous arctic explorer Stanislaus Grumman, and the witch queen Ruta Skadi decides to accompany Serafina on her quest to find Lyra (though she herself is seeking Lord Azriel).īack in the other world, Will and Lyra encounter a young girl named Angelica and her brother Paolo, who give them some information about their location. She then flees the ship and rejoins her clan, who has since joined up with another ally of Lyra’s, aeronaut Lee Scoresby. Seeing her fellow witch is close to breaking, Serafina reveals herself and kills her before she can speak. Coulter has captured a witch and is torturing her for information on Lyra.

Making herself invisible, Serafina boards the ship and discovers Mrs. Meanwhile, the witch Serafina Pekkala is searching for her clan, when she comes across Mrs. He passes through it into another world, and there encounters Lyra, who is shocked at his lack of a daemon. Will manages to escape the men when he stumbles upon an “anomaly” taking the form of a sort of tear in the fabric of reality. Will himself finds the letters and flees, killing one of the men in the process. He returns home but finds that then men are already there, searching for letters exchanged by Will’s parents.

Will is pursued by shadowy men claiming to be from the government, and is forced to leave his mother with his old piano teacher in order to keep her safe. The story begins not in Lyra’s world, but in our own, where young Will Perry cares for his sick mother in his world’s version of Oxford. Phillip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife begins after his previous novel, The Golden Compass, left its readers with Lyra Belaqua passing through a tear in her universe and on to another. Written by people who wish to remain anonymous We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman