The subtle knife and what it does is VERY cool.

The shift from Lyra as the strong, female protagonist... to Will being the main character (with Lyra suddenly pretty submissive) is somewhat jarring.

This book ends on a major cliffhanger*, so I went straight into book three to find out how it all ends.

*It's not so much a cliffhanger as it is a very abrupt ending in the middle of action. I think the author maybe wrote the whole series in one big chunk and this is where they decided to lop it off to create the second book.

In my review of book one, I wrote that I couldn't really see the anti-religion yet. A friend wrote to tell me that becomes more apparent in books two and three, and it does. It's still fairly subtle (ha! word play!) in this one, but it's becoming more obvious.

I'm sure I'll have more to say when I finish book three. I'm about halfway through.