The Subtle Knife is the second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, it introduces Will Parry our second protagonist. Unlike The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife is not conveniently split into three parts. However, in The Subtle Knife Lyra is no longer the only POV character, so to (hopefully) make it as cohesive as possible, I’ll make a post for every time the POV shifts. This will mean that some of the posts will be rather short, I imagine, since they will only be covering a single chapter, but I might also post them more rapidly or perhaps in clusters (maybe, I’m not making any promises, because if I do, I bet something will happen). Following the rules I just made for myself, this post covers chapter one “The Cat and the Hornbeam Trees.” Spoiler warning.
Summary
We are introduced to Will Parry. It’s immediately clear that he is in some kind of trouble, as he is bringing his “crazy” mom to his old piano teacher and his desperation shines through as he convinces her to look after his mom. Once Will has convinced Mrs. Cooper to look after his mom for a while, he leaves for home, which he is aware has been under surveillance by some shadowy/suspect men, (who has broken into his home before). Will searches for a green leather case that his mom has been keeping hidden and which he is convinced is what the men wants (he is right). The men break into the house and there is a rather tense scene as Will hides from them and they search the house. The men realizes that Will is there and one of them corner him on the second floor, Will pushes him and because his cat Moxie is behind the man, he stumbles and falls down the stairs and dies. Will manages to flee and makes his way to Oxford, he was already prepared to leave.
Flashback to Will realizing that something was wrong with his mom when he was seven and they were playing a game that enemies were tracking them, and Will realized that the enemies were only in his mom’s mind. Since then he was always aware of his mom’s anxiety and odd behavior. His father is absent, and he has a lot of question about his father and his mother does not have a lot of answers for him, but since he was a child he has dreamed of finding his father and rescuing him, so that they can be a happy family. Due to these circumstances Will teaches himself to go unnoticed by others.
With the green leather case of letters from his father and the contact information of the lawyer, who pays his mom’s allowance, as his only clues, Will is going to Oxford to find answers about his father. That evening in the Oxford suburbs, Will is walking along a road trying to figure out the smartest thing to do next, when he notices a tabby, which reminds him of his own, behaving oddly. The cat is focused on a certain spot in the air and suddenly it disappears. Will goes to investigate and finds an invisible window into another world. Will goes through the window and finds himself in a Mediterranean city, which has been hastily abandoned. He explores the city, but finds no one at all. He is quite happy with his discovery of the city as it gives him a whole world to hide in. He goes to find food and explores the house he chooses. When he reaches the last door, the door bursts open and he is attacked by a girl and a cat (three guesses who). Once they have calmed down, they talk. Lyra is quite shocked at Will’s lack of a dæmon. Will is quite shocked at the existence of dæmons and Pan changing shape. It’s culture clash all around. Lyra and Pan are very wary of Will because he doesn’t have a dæmon, but Will is not behaving like he is severed, and he knows how to cook, so they reach a truce. They talk to one another about their different worlds and Lyra tells Will about Dust. She also eventually concludes that Will’s dæmon must be inside him, since he is behaving like a person. Will invites Lyra to his Oxford, so she can talk to some scholars about Dust, and they agree to go in the morning. Once Will has gone to bed, Lyra asks the alethiometer if Will is a friend or an enemy. The alethiometer’s unsettling respond is that he is a murderer. And Lyra being Lyra decides a murderer is a worthy companion and relaxes.
Commentary
We meet Will for the first time (yay). It’s immediately clear that he doesn’t have an easy life. Will is clearly a child who is used to taking care of himself and to being the responsible one in his family. From the description of his mom, it’s clear that she is suffering from some kind of mental problems, she is very dependent on Will and don’t seem to be all there. Compared to the more fantastical problems and setting of The Golden Compass, where children were being kidnapped and severed from their dæmons. Will’s problems, an absent father, a mother, who is not all there, and his fear of what will happen, if he is taken away by the social services, combined with the fact that he is clearly from our normal world bring a chilling sense of realness into the story. It becomes all the more scary due to the fact that it’s so realistic.
Will is clearly a very principled person at his core. Even though there is no one to enforce the rules, he pays for what he takes in Cittàgazze, because it is the right thing to do. In contrast Lyra hasn’t really given any thought to paying for what she takes until she sees Will doing it.
Will and Lyra meeting is just brilliant, and for all that our two very independent protagonists immediately clash, they seem to form a tentative connection from the very beginning. Of course, it also highlights Lyra’s somewhat questionable way of deciding who to trust. I definitely don’t agree that someone being a murderer makes them my new best friend.
On a side note, I really appreciate how Will Parry already makes an appearance in season 1 of His Dark Materials, it gave me a much better sense of where he was in his story concurrently with Lyra’s adventures in The Golden Compass.
What we have learned about Dust
Nothing New.
And that’s about it. This is part one of nine, so see you in a month for part two.
Our Thoughts in Transit 