{"id":421,"date":"2011-07-06T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=421"},"modified":"2011-07-02T19:58:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-03T02:58:05","slug":"mark-reads-the-subtle-knife-chapter-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/07\/mark-reads-the-subtle-knife-chapter-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Subtle Knife’: Chapter 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the eighth chapter of The Subtle Knife<\/em>, Lyra and Will travel to the Tower of the Angels to retrieve what Charles has asked for, where Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life is set on to a new path. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Subtle Knife<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lyra crossed the bridge to the stars in order to find Lord Asriel, and she could not be further from that plan than she is now.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE TOWER OF THE ANGELS<\/strong><\/p>\n

I could see why people might dislike this, but for me, this is about as close to fantasy perfection as I could ask for. I love when a story is taken to realms you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d not even considered, when you expect it to be about this thing<\/em>, but it ends up being about this other thing that never even entered your brain<\/em>. Pullman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quite good at keeping me guessing at this point, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain I never once would have thought that the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s title would mean what it does here. But seriously, Lyra has not even thought or mentioned her father’s name once<\/em> in at least a hundred pages. AMAZING!<\/p>\n

I also didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect Pullman to immediately continue with Will and Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story; he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been mixing it up so often with Serafina and Lee, and given that Ruta found Lord Asriel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fortress, we have three other subplots with ridiculously exciting possibilities waiting for us. AH THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON AND I HAVE FIGURED OUT PRETTY MUCH NONE OF IT. Well, except that Charles is from Lyra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world. Which…that is<\/em> the most obvious clue of them all, so I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t suppose I deserve to be patting myself on the back. why can i never figure these things out.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chapter eight. WELL. WELL. I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best for me to try to make sense of this all in one of the only ways I know how to organize such things.<\/p>\n

A Very Ridiculous and Lengthy List of Things Found in Chapter Eight of The Subtle Knife<\/em> That Made Mark Want To Pass Out From Excitement<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
<\/strong>Charles is very knowledgeable of Citt\u00c3\u00a1gazze and the Guild and has no qualms about revealing this to Lyra and Will. How many other<\/em> worlds does he know about? Does he collect artifacts from parallel worlds for a living?<\/li>\n
<\/strong>Lyra swears she recognizes this man, and I know it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pullman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way of saying CAN YOU GUESS WHO THIS IS<\/em>, but I literally cannot. I have either completely forgotten most of The Golden Compass<\/em> already or it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that easy of a clue. I honestly believe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the former.<\/li>\n
<\/strong>Before dropping Will and Lyra off, Charles tells Will there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mighty fine photo of him in the newspaper that day. GREAT. GREAT<\/em>. Can he ever return to his own world?<\/li>\n
<\/strong>At the Tower of the Angels, Pan flies up to an open window and confirms there is a young man inside. Oh, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dancing. Dancing<\/em>. I have given up hope ever figuring this out. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just going to enjoy the ride.<\/li>\n
<\/strong>When they make it up to that room, they discover Pantalaimon was not exaggerating in the slightest. It really does appear that the young man is dancing<\/em> with the knife Charles wants in his hand.<\/li>\n
<\/strong>Oh, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly someone on the roof that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not this man. WHAT.<\/li>\n
<\/strong>Oh, and that noise from the roof is an old man with his hands tied behind his back.<\/li>\n
<\/strong>Oh, and his name is Giacomo Paradisi, and he is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bearer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the knife, but the young man below stole<\/em> it from him.<\/li>\n
<\/strong>Oh, and he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hold[s] the subtle knife on behalf of the Guild.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which sounds like nonsense, but obviously Pullman has a plan for this.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> The young man with the subtle knife appears on the roof and the fight that takes place is disorienting and brutal. Perhaps this is motivated largely by the young man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frustration with being unable to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cut through\u00e2\u20ac\u009d whatever the older man on the roof was referring to.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> When Will and Lyra successfully trip the man, the knife falls out of his hand and appears to slice right into the stone ground as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if it had fallen into butter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d what the hell<\/em><\/li>\n
<\/strong> Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s internal monologue about causing this man as much pain as possible is something that I, too, learned in elementary and junior high, but I was always<\/em> on the receiving end of it. OH WELL UTTER TRAGEDY<\/em>.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Will gets to enact that history of violence on the young man and lands a well-placed kick to his kneecap, and the man falls, and then Will stomps on the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hand TWICE in order to get the knife away from him, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blood and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON and then Will shoves the man down the stairs, much like the intruder in the first chapter, and he gets the knife, and the man runs away, and WHAT A BADASS VICTORY.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Oh, right, that victory is short-lived because WILL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TWO SMALLEST FINGERS ON HIS LEFT HAND FALL RIGHT OFF. <\/strong>WHAT THE HOLY FUCK IS GOING ON.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> No, seriously, I cannot get over this. Two of his fingers have fallen off and he is gushing blood HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. <\/em><\/li>\n
<\/strong> <\/em>Lyra is witness to Tullio, the young man, being attacked by the Specters below the Tower. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ignore the parallel to Will knowing he killed someone, and while the Specters don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly kill a person, watching Tullio convulse and thrash in terror, and then become lethargic, is ridiculously disturbing.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Giacomo tells Will the knife is his, as he is now the bearer<\/em> of it. He says he knows this is true and shows by raising his left hand to show that the exact same fingers are missing, too.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> WHAT SORT OF OBJECT PICKS ITS NEXT OWNER BY SEVERING FINGERS?????<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Giacomo tells Will and Lyra they are never to give Charles the knife; he will betray them in order to get it.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> The subtle knife is revealed to be an actual<\/em> subtle knife, made of some bizarre material with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153subtle\u00e2\u20ac\u009d colors flowing through it. It reminds me of the aurora, personally, and I also now sense that this is directly<\/em> related to the alethiometer. How? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure. Lyra, however, recognizes that one side of the knife is the exact same color\/make up of the blade that was used during intercision<\/em>. How could the scientists in Bolvangar create a blade like this???<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Giacomo reveals that one edge of the subtle knife is able to cut through any material in the world, and then demonstrates it by cutting through a spoon like it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a slice of paper.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Oh, and the other side cuts through the wall between universes.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> The other side of the subtle knife cuts through the wall between universes. <\/strong><\/li>\n
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SUBTLE KNIFE CUTS THROUGH THE WALL BETWEEN UNIVERSES.<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n
<\/strong> Okay, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m all right now. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve begun to process this. Giacomo seems rushed for some reason, and stresses that Will has only a very short time to learn how to use the knife in order to cut a hole in the world. We learn it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remarkably similar to the process that Lyra uses to work the alethiometer. Does Dust\/dark matter flow through the knife? Why does this sort of soulful concentration bring about such fantastical powers? I recognize that this is what they have in common, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figure out why<\/em> they work this way.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> When will has a breakdown in front of everyone, overcome with sadness, grief, and pain, Pantalaimon decides to break the taboo between human and d\u00c3\u00a6mon and lick Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wound<\/em>. It is one of the most moving passages in the entire series. Pan works independent of Lyra, but Lyra knows that this act is deeply moral and right, despite how weird it is for her.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a really, really interesting bit that Pullman provides that I think is a much larger clue to this whole series: When Lyra is more aware than ever how similar this process is to using the alethiometer, she compares it to the same knowledge that Dr. Malone, and Keats, and other great minds who know about letting go of one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind. So what exactly does this mean for the story here? We know Dust is attracted to acts of humanity. Is Pullman trying to say that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing more human that this process? I AM INTRIGUED.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Will cuts a hole in this world and they all look in on a parallel universe. I just…I cannot even deal with this. This book is seriously one of the best things I have ever read.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Giacomo teaches Will how to CLOSE THE WINDOW. YOU CAN CLOSE THEM. But why are some left open?<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Upon Will\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s success, Giacomo spends what little time he has left explaining what he can about what he has been doing as part of the Guild and what Will is up against. He confirms that the Guild brought Specters into the world by splitting particle bonds. No one knows which universe they came from, but they arrived three hundred years before. !!!!!!!<\/li>\n
<\/strong> The window Will climbed through was opened by Giacomo, who was trying to lure Charles through in order to have the Specters destroy him. CHRIST.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Giacomo reveals why he is in such a rush: He needs to go kill himself, as he no longer has the subtle knife and is not protected from the Specters. holy fucking hell THIS BOOK<\/em>.<\/li>\n
<\/strong> Lyra, deeply upset after bidding Giacomo goodbye, is comforted by Will, who reveals that their next step is to obviously<\/em> travel back to his universe and steal back the alethiometer. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM SO EXCITED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n
My god, I am so unprepared and I have never been so happy to state that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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