The last installment in this trilogy is epic and amazing. Overall the group of books is incredibly nuanced and well-paced, and about the only thing I found lacking through it all was the absence of the status of one character at the end of the second book, not to be heard from again until the seventh chapter in this one. Otherwise the story builds to an amazing point, where the details are clearly stated but the underlying meanings are free to settle in on their own. I like how Pullman plays with the idea of a happy ending, though I have to resist describing how.

Poking around on his site, I discovered that the series lost Pullman’s illustrations in the first US editions (but were later included in the 2002 edition). Then there is also a reference to a companion book, Lyra’s Oxford, as being “a sort of stepping-stone between the trilogy and the book that’s coming next.” What?! Apparently Pullman is working on another book entitled The Book of Dust. It seems also to be intended as a “companion” (i.e., not a continuation of the trilogy exactly), in the form of a collection of short stories, some of which may make it somewhat of a prequel… except that it hasn’t been written, so who knows? (Pullman last mentioned it a year ago.)

I’m still not into the dæmon I got on the movie site, but 20 questions is probably not enough for accuracy with or without your friends judging your answers.

I remember when I first read these books years back, I didn’t enjoy The Subtle Knife as much as The Golden Compass, but it must have been misguided Lyra obsession. This book starts off with a whole new character and a new world (“our own world,” a note clarifies), which is kind of unexpected and jarring from the all-out fantasy of The Golden Compass. It only takes one chapter for Will to slip into the Spector-laden world of Cittàgazze and come across Lyra. Then we’re back following the strange events following the end of the first book.

I liked Will more this time, especially how his perspective puts Lyra in her place: “Don’t they have can openers in your world?” “In my world servants do the cooking,” she said scornfully.

While certain aspects of this book are establishing the scene for the final piece of the trilogy, it actually resists the middle-book-as-stepping-stone tendency. The story of the knife and exploration of its powers deserve the focus of an entire novel alone. I didn’t remember the Texan aeronaut being so important to the story either and developed a particular fondness for him.

I realized that it’s been 8–10 years since I first read this book! When talking about the upcoming movie, I couldn’t keep characters’ dæmons straight (you can find yours on the movie site) and realized I’d forgotten lots of details, as well as major plot points. The plus of that being that reading it again was almost like reading it for the first time.

Not yet having fully left Pottermania behind, I couldn’t help but compare similarities: the child growing up without knowing the truth about her parents, unaware she is destined to be the only one who can save the world, beginning her coming-of-age with a discovery of a fantastical world where she inexplicably knows how to reacts to situations perfectly. But Lyra is a less poignant, more kick-ass character than Harry. And this book involves armored bears.

I like the meandering, digression-laden style of this story, though it might have made many of the eventual revelations a bit less powerful. There were enough veiled clues that lessened any impact, but then it’s not really meant as a suspense novel. It’s kind of a science-fiction story, but also not so much since the details of those mechanical aspects are left for your imagination. But overall I like Ishiguro’s prose style and couldn’t have stopped reading even if I knew exactly how it would all end. There’s a lovely isolation and curious disconnect from the source of that isolation present in the narrator.

I think I’ve been reading too many books with dialogue denouements lately (“This is why that happened.” … “Oh, okay. Why did this happen?”), which is kind of unavoidable but tiresome at times.

If you’ve read the book, you might enjoy the Guardian’s digested read version of the story. It will, obviously, give everything away if you haven’t. I don’t feel that snarky about the book, though there are a few elements I was surprised didn’t figure into the story at all.

Manda sent me the art book version of this story for my birthday. A film version was first started in 2002, but was shut down when Brad Pitt left. Aronofsky went to work both on a revised screenplay and a graphic novel based on the original screenplay. The realized movie version (with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz instead of Brad and Cate Blanchett) was released in 2006.

There aren’t many differences from the first version to the second the trio of parallel stories fulfill the same general contexts (with a few minor plot changes), but the improvement seems to be how they are spliced together in the completed movie paces the action better and highlights those parallels differently. The same themes are played out in the past, present, and future versions; at its root the story is about acceptance of death. The art by Kent Williams is beautiful, though the old-school comic lettering used for the dialogue and thoughts seemed inappropriate stylistically.

The movie is particularly interesting as the budget was kept small primarily through using macro photography techniques to achieve the special effects. How is using deep-sea microorganisms photographed in 3D cheaper than computers? Weird, but it looks pretty amazing on film.