HisDarkMaterials.org
HisDarkMaterials.org is one of the leading His Dark Materials websites, including information about The Golden Compass movie, the book trilogy, extensive fan art galleries, photographs of Philip Pullman, and related visual resources. It also contains a dæmon name generator, an active chatroom, a His Dark Materials role playing game, and an interactive encyclopedia. News is updated daily, with members being able to discuss news items. The website is also home to Cittàgazze.net, the world's largest His Dark Materials forum.
Movies
The Golden Compass
Books
Overview
The Golden Compass / Northern Lights
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass
Lyra’s Oxford
The Book of Dust
Features
The Golden Compass World Premiere
Cannes Filmfestival 2007
Alethiometer
Cartography
Last updated on 17 September 2007
Summary
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Summary: The Subtle Knife
In The Subtle Knife, readers are introduced to William Parry, a young boy living in our world's equivalent of Winchester, England. Only twelve years old, Will bears the responsibility of an adult. Following the disappearance of his explorer-father, John Parry, Will became parent, provider, and protector to his mentally ill mother. In protecting his mother not only from imagined threats of her illness but also a true threat to the family's safety, Will unintentionally murders a man robbing his house in order to find a series of letters from his missing father and finds himself on the run to Oxford to uncover the true whereabouts of his father.Will does indeed make an astonishing discovery, but not about his father. Along a busy road in Oxford he happens upon an extraordinary window in the air. Invisible from most angles, the window leads into an entirely new world. Through the window, Will lands in Cittàgazze, a beautiful yet haunted city inhabited by soul-eating spectres and run by children who are protected from them until they reach adolescense. Not only does Cittàgazze hold secrets of the ghost-like creatures, but also inspection of a particular café reveals Lyra Belacqua and her dæmon Pantalaimon to have also wandered into this world. After an initial shock, Lyra realizes Willhas no visible dæmon, but must have it inside himself.
Although both children are safe from the spectres in Cittagazze, they pass back into Will's Oxford to find answers to their questions: for Will, whereabouts of his father, for Lyra, the secret of Dust. While Will travels to a library to find information on the disappearance of his father, using the alethiometer Lyra seeks out a scholar - in this world a scientist - to find out more about Dust. Lyra is led to Dr. Mary Malone, the Director of the Dark Matter Research Unit in Oxford. In her discussions with Mary Malone, Lyra is attached to a computer using electrodes and puts on a magnificent screen display of talking with Dust - Dr. Malone's Dark Matter - in the same way she talks with the alethiometer. Through this, Mary Malone reveals that Dust is a conscious particle. As Lyra leaves, Mary Malone understands her next task is to find a way to communicate with Dust even more successfully. Through the particles she will uncover even more about the vital role she plays in the future of the worlds.
When Will and Lyra return to Cittàgazze, Will reads the letters his father wrote during his final expedition North - the same letters the robbers were after. In the writing he discovers that just like himself, his father had walked through a window into another world, thus disappearing from their family. For Will, this was finally something both father and son could share, but more importantly it meant his father could be alive and Will could find him.
Lyra, meanwhile, pays a second visit to Dr. Mary Malone and this time is stalked down by authorities interested in the whereabouts of a certain William Parry - wanted for questioning by the police and seen in the company of Lyra on her previous trip through the window into Oxford. She flees from the authorities and is seemingly rescued by Sir Charles Latrom, a man she'd met at an Oxford museum on her previous visit. Unbeknownst to Lyra, he is after her alethiometer. Flustered by her narrow escape, Lyra realizes too late that Sir Charles has stolen her alethiometer and she returns to Cittàgazze and Will. When the pair try to ask for the alethiometer's return, they learn its ransom value: a certain knife located in the high tower of Cittàgazze.
Returning to Cittàgazze, Will and Lyra climb to the top of the Torre Degli Angeli: the Tower of Angels. Unrightfully held in the hands of a lunatic unable to truly weild the knife, Will and Lyra are both forced into a fight for the knife. Will wins the battle only to discover two fingers on his left hand were cut off during the foray. This is the badge of the bearer, says an old man, Giacomo Paradisi, who Will and Lyra release from bondage within the tower. Will has become the bearer of the subtle knife, a powerful and devastating weapon with edges so sharp they cut through the fabric of the worlds themselves. Armed with the subtle knife and realizing they cannot trade it to Sir Charles, Lyra and Will cut through the worlds with a plan to outsmarting the thief and retrieving Lyra's alethiometer. Back in Oxford they find him conspiring with Mrs. Coulter and Lyra suddenly realizes Sir Charles Latrom is none other than Lord Boreal, a man she'd met at Mrs. Coulter's dinner party in London. He, too, had found his way through windows left by the subtle knife into other worlds. With a cunning plan, Lyra and Will are able to steal the alethiometer back. However, their retreat back into Cittàgazze is cut short by Will's wounded left hand - still bleeding freely from the cuts he suffered during his fight. The two take refuge in an abandoned mansion in Cittàgazze.
After a single night's rest Will, Lyra, and Pantalaimon wake as the object of a mob of angry children all after the power of the knife. With his left hand still bleeding, Will is unable to escape far from the mob and he and Lyra take shelter in a Belvedere, a partial ruin of a stone building on the outskirts of the city. Unable to cut back into Oxford because they will appear just outside Sir Charles's house the two are forced to fend off the attackers until with a rain of well-aimed and harmless arrows, the witches appear as a rescue party traveling from Lyra's world to find her. The children retreat with the new threat. The witches reveal they cannot land because of the spectres, but quickly see that the spectres fear Will because of the subtle knife. Their efforts to heal his wounded hand are unable to stop the bleeding and as they continue moving forward on a mission to find Will's father, he continues losing strength.
Back in Lyra's world, the Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby, has located the man Stanislaus Grumman, a person of interest since Lyra had told him a story of seeing Grumman's severed head in the Retiring Room of Jordan College. Grumman was a renowned explorer and theologian from the far Northern, Tartar by initiation, he was said to be interested in the study of Dust and an object of power. He was rumored to be an unusual man with an osprey dæmon who rejected the love of a witch, a dangerous action earning him her hatred for his entire life. After a search effort, Lee Scoresby and his dæmon arrive in a small Tartar town and are introduced to the tribal shaman, a man named Jopari - the Tartar pronunciation of John Parry, Will's father. While on his final expedition in his own world, John Parry stumbled first into the world of the spectres where his travel companions were killed, and then into this world. Unable to find a window leading home, he adopted the persona of Stanislaus Grumman and endeavored to learn everything he could of Dust and its impact on the universe. In his studies, he discovered an instrument he vowed to devote his life to - a knife that could not only allow him to return to his own world, but also destroy the oppression suffered in all worlds in the name of The Authority. Grumman's task, with the help of Lee Scoresby, is to find the bearer of the knife and tell him of his destiny.
Narrowly escaping from the Magisterium, Lee Scoresby takes Grumman through the aurora into the new world in his hot air balloon. However, the Church cannot be stopped from following them and after the shaman uses his powers of weather and spirit to do away with three ensuing zeppelins, he runs out of strength and in the world of spectres, they are forced from the air by a fourth zeppelin and take to foot. In a high gulch boardered by well-sized boulders, Lee Scoresby sets up his rifle to take out the remaining forces of the Magisterium as they land and set chase at the bottom of the gulch. He pushes John Parry onward in his task, forcing the man to promise to tell the bearer of this knife to use it as protection for Lyra, and makes his last stand against the ensuing forces.
Unable to sleep from the continued throbbing and bleeding of his hand, Will restlessly continues past the witches night guard and up a mountain path as the remaining party sleeps behind him. High on the mountaintop, in the darkness of the night, Will encounters the shrouded shaman who after confirming Will bears the knife from his wounded left hand, heals Will's hand with a bloodmoss mixture from Lyra's world. Grumman becomes disappointed the bearer must be so young and begins roughly telling Will of his fate, that he with the knife, stands as the tipping point between the forces of oppression and freedom in the upcoming war. Will must find Lord Asriel and join the army he creates in another world. Curious to see the face of the bearer, John Parry strikes a match and the moment of light is enough to realize that it is not a meeting between bearer and shaman, but between father and son. In the next instant, the witch set as a night guard for Will’s safety kills John Parry. In the flicker of light, she also realize John Parry for who he was - Grumman, the man who had scorned her love for the wife and child he'd left behind in another world. Once again, Will loses the father he had never known.
Dazed and hurt, Will climbs back down the mountain to return to Lyra but instead finds two angels awaiting him. The witches lie in a haphazard circle around their camp: all struck down by the spectres in Will's absence. Lyra is gone; the rucksack containing her alethiometer is all that remains. Friendless, fatherless, and confused, Will finds himself standing at the edge of a choice as the angels on one side beckon to go to Lord Asriel and war, the obvious kidnap of Lyra pulls at his bond of friendship, and the body of the father he wanted so badly to know lies behind him.