The Ending of the Subtle Knife

[_Alena]

Did the ending make anyone else mad? I mean seriously if I hadn't have bought all three books at the same time and already read them... I would have been freaking out in my head. The way it left you hanging was pretty much just cruel haha.

[king of Svalbard]

It's just one of the many ways authors get you to read the rest of the books. It may be cruel but it's almost always unavoidable.

[bee]

It didn't make me mad at all. It made me go downstairs and immediately grab Amber Spyglass off the shelf. I thought it was alright to leave a cliffhanger. Now if that had simply been the end and there was no book after it, then I would be mad.

[aklebury]

It didn't make me mad, but it certainly made me impatient for TAS...
I didn't have the luxury of simply pulling it off the bookshelf - because I got TSK as soon as it was released I had to wait ages for TAS to come out

[AUST]

It didn't make me mad, but it certainly made me impatient for TAS...
I didn't have the luxury of simply pulling it off the bookshelf - because I got TSK as soon as it was released I had to wait ages for TAS to come out

Exactly-did the same to me...

[Jez]

It made me go out and buy a hardback copy of TAS as soon as it was on the shelves. Cliffhangers are good at that.

[kezmondo]

Yeah cliffhangers are the best, would you have wanted to read TAS more or less if there weren't a cliffhanger? I rest my case.

[AlaskaStreet]

I actually just finished re-reading TSK in class and I forgot how bad the cliffhanger was. Thankfully, I also brought TAS to school and kept rght on reading.

I love cliffhangers, though. The give you a jolt of adrenaline and make my brain come up with all sorts of endings and stuff. When I do NaNo next month, I'm gonna be sure to end at least a few chapters hanging.

[barnabat]

I like the way it ends... it's like the penultimate act of a Shakespeare play - absolutely everything is in chaos, Lyra's captured, the witches are mostly dead/spectred (is that a word? o0) and Parry and Scoresby (two of the 'fatherly' figures of the story) are both dead. Also, the spectres are under Mrs Coulter's control, Asriel's army is being built... Everything is like a tightly coiled spring, ready to explode into a climax before it can be resolved.

[AUST]

Yep it is a fantastic ending-very skillfully created by Pullman. Still, it infuriated me for about 3 years-the sign of a good book. I kept re-reading tog et soem idea about what might happen next.

[will parry hopeful]

I thought the ending was really good, it made me want to read TAS alot and I was also angry that I had to wait for it.

[Atrias]

The ending for me was so hellish... I knew I had to wait for the third book and it was awful to have to. Wondering what was happening to Will and Lyra as Pullman was writing the third book and all that. It drove me insane for ages after and as soon as I knew that TAS was out I got it right away and pretty much stormed through it straight away.

As an ending however its a great literary device for heightening anticipation and all that, it worked really well for me as I have pointed out!

[Alex-Giovanni]

I wasn't mad at all because I didn't get TSK straight away seeing as I was reading another book at the time. So by the time I'd finished TSK, TAS had come out and i'd bought it so I could go on to it right after finishing TSK, and man was that a good move.

[Yrael]

Yes that is what hapened to me, by the time i had read the first one, both the second and third had come out, so i didn't have to worry

[AUST]

Yes that is what hapened to me, by the time i had read the first one, both the second and third had come out, so i didn't have to worry

Sadly I can get through a book, particually fiction, in about a day or so so I demolished TSK and TAS very very quickly. Then did it again...and again...

This I know both books off by heart.

[Yrael]

Same for me, i already said in another post i got told off by my english teacher for always reading hdm.

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

When I read NL, I had to wait about a year before TSK came out. Then I had to wait another two years, I think, before TAS was published. I was much more patient in those days, strangely. I closed NL, and my thought process went something like this: Wow. (*sits in silence for a few minutes*). Wow. (*re-reads last couple of pages*). Wow. (*flips to the front of the book and re-reads again, slowly, over a few days*). The same thing happened when reading TSK.

But in those days I just seemed to accept that you waited for books to be published. It didn't have to be all nownownownow. These days, I seem to have turned into an impatient toddler. The way I read now is in a desperate rush, as if it's painful not to know everything, straight away. On Tuesday I read a book that I'd been wanting to read since December (when I had read its prequel) and upon finishing it, could neither sleep nor function until I'd read the next book in the series. Unfortunately, the next book doesn't come out until March.

I've not been getting much sleep recently.

[jessia]

When I read NL, I had to wait about a year before TSK came out. Then I had to wait another two years, I think, before TAS was published.

it was way more than two years. i remember this specifically.

did people do crazy midnight line-ups for book releases like harry potter... before harry potter?

[Aletheia Dolorosa]

did people do crazy midnight line-ups for book releases like harry potter... before harry potter?

I can't remember anything like that happening for another book, but I'm not sure. I got TAS for Christmas anyway, before it had come out in Australia. And a friend of mine had read it even earlier because she'd been in England.

[Pausert]

I luckily had the ability to pick up TAS right out of my book shelf. If TAS hadn't been released when I had finished the TSK I would have been a very angry and bewildered person.

As for lining up, what bout The Book of DUst. I doubt anyone is going to line up for it, sadly. I do think I'll be there as crazed as can be to purchase it the morning of its release. Or so I hope. Or think.