The Subtle Knife

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman.

What's better than one impulsive child with a reality warping macguffin? Two

Opening a sequel with the POV of a completely unknown character is always an interesting move, leaving the reader wondering if they'll be important going forward or killed off immediately to set up a new threat. Someone does kick the bucket in the first chapter but it's not Will Parry, our new deuteragonist from a version of Earth slightly more familiar than Lyra's. With him come a cast of modern villains and allies, as well as a surprise returning character with a fleshed out backstory.

While escaping said villains he stumbles across a 'window' to one of the many parallel worlds exposed by Lord Asriel's actions in the first book, which just so happens to be both where Lyra ended up and the place which kicked off the whole 'travelling between worlds' thing. After some initial hostility they team up and work together to retrieve the alethiometer from a wealthy thief and get Will his own reality-warping macguffin, the titular 'Subtle Knife'. It offers a much simpler way of opening (and closing) windows between worlds than child sacrifice at the North Pole, in exchange for two of your fingers and litres of lost blood.

Good ol' Lee Scoresby makes a return as well, on his own quest to ferry an Important Person to the location of their Destiny. Apparently that destiny was providing the motivation for Will to abandon a kidnapped Lyra and fly off with some angels, but we'll find out in the finale. In general another solid entry in the series, nothing in particular stood out while reading it but I enjoyed doing so and I'm looking forward to the finale. I feel like I remembered some parts of this, less than the first but I must have read it at some point. Hopefully I never made it to the 3rd so I can be suitably surprised by the outcome of Man vs God: Electric Boogaloo.