Book Review: The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (48 in 2012? #23)

     It's been a few years since I read The Golden Compass, I book I enjoyed quite a bit.  At that time I went into the series with a fresh mind; I hadn't heard of the book, it's author, or any controversy that may have come along with them.  After reading the book and forming my own thoughts and opinions on the subjects brought up, I found out that the series was seen as an anti-religion story, something I didn't fully see.  It obviously takes shots at certain ideas that come from religion including the church itself, but it never went as far as saying religion was evil itself and, in my mind, took just as much time taking shots at science.  I felt the book was attacking power grabbers and dogma however those things manifest themselves.  Of course there was always the chance of that point of view changing over the course of three books.  Now that I am two books into the series, I still see it as an even attack on the extremes of both religion and science.  To say after two books that Pullman is only attacking religion is reading his work looking for those attacks.  There are characters who are just as evil in the world of science, who commit deeds just as horrible as those in the church.  Criticizing the story as anti-religion is limiting the scope of the novel that Pullman has created and not giving him credit for creating a fully flushed out world.
     As far as Pullman's writing goes, this is very much a young adult novel.  In the years since reading The Golden Compass, I must have become more critical of writing styles, because I found The Subtle Knife much more juvenile in it's language and style then I remember The Golden Compass being.  Pullman is not writing anywhere near the depth of character and story that Suzanne Collins did in her Hunger Games novels.  This is very much the type of novel I would normally stay away from because it just wasn't written for me, it was clearly written for young teens.
     Now that I have read two of three books in the series, I'm sure that I will finish it at some point, but I wouldn't recommend these books to adults.  This is a young adult fantasy series written for young adults.  Many of the themes are more mature then you would expect, but the language and style is much more suitable to younger readers.  Pullman has created a wonderful world with fabulous characters, but I would leave these books for the kids.