My Weekly Book

Spoiler alert: you might not want to read this too closely if you wish the plot of His Dark Materials to remain a mystery to you. There are no deliberate spoilers, but even so…

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I think I’ve put my finger on what it is about Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife that left me feeling a just a little bit underwhelmed.

All the reviews I’ve dug up say it either suffers from or succeeds in spite of something they call ‘middle book syndrome’ and I think that is spot on.

The argument is that, as the second book in the trilogy, it has neither the initial impact of the first one nor the thrilling climax of the last to give it a boost.

It is noticeably thinner than either of its colleagues, and I can’t shake the feeling that most of the characters in it are dashing at top speed between one book and the other, as if along a six-lane highway. Take, for example, either Lee Scoresby or Serafina Pekkala, who hardly stand still for a moment in their bid to be where they need to be for the finale (or not - but that really would be a spoiler, wouldn’t it?).

What does this book have which is distinctively its own? Well, the character of Will is a pretty big answer to that question, and I particularly like the way he is introduced. But it is very interesting to ask exactly how late in a trilogy you can get away with introducing such a major character. I would say probably no more than halfway through the middle volume. And then you’d be pushed for character/relationship development, so he’s very nearly on borrowed time already.

Also the world of Cittagaze. But, as that is a crossroads between worlds, a necessary bit of plotting, this book feels like it fulfils exactly the same function - as a link between the worlds of the other two.

Apart from this, we are in the world of the familiar, the witches, the aeronaut and the evil machinations of Mrs Coulter, doing what needs to be done to propel the plot forward. The link between souls and daemons is a bit more obvious, and so is the Miltonian plot about paradise lost and regained. More pieces dropping neatly into their preordained places.

(Come on, give the guy a break, the plotting is insanely complicated, with a dozen threads for him to hold onto. But still, but still…)

I think it’s a smashing book that achieves great heights of writing and which, as I already said, succeeded both in shocking me rigid (the events in the tower) and nearly reducing me to sobs on the London Underground (the spoiler alluded to obliquely above). It’s got a thrilling cliffhanger ending that works on several levels. And I shall definitely be reading The Amber Spyglass very soon.

But I was enthralled by Northern Lights and perhaps I was hoping for a bit much to achieve the same effect from this one too.

And how much do either The Tombs of Atuan or The Two Towers suffer from ‘middle book syndrome’? I would say that the Le Guin book is so distinct from either its predecessor or its successor that you couldn’t say it does. And, to be honest, I can never remember exactly where each volume of the Lord of the Rings begins and ends, especially since the films came along and muddied the waters.

It’s just that I don’t remember noticing it as strongly before.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2004 at 1:09 pm and is filed under 2004 - Books read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.