Second Down, One More to Go

I just finished the second book in the His Dark Materials series, The Subtle Knife. In the book Lyra and Will have to go into another world, full of Specters which are soul eating apparitions, and find Wills father. This of course brings other challenges for Lyra and Will, like some former evil characters coming back, and the alethiometer being stolen.
I really liked that they added Will as a new main(ish) character. I say main(ish) because you know that Lyra is still the main character but Will is a huge part of the story. One part of the story that I liked was that Will also got his own thing- since Lyra has the alethiometer (or the golden compass) Will gets the subtle knife. I have seen this before though- the main character having something special and then meeting someone with something equally or less special. But when I think of Will not having something like the subtle knife it seems unfair that he does not have a special power or anything. This is one part of the book that I liked, but did not like at the same time because I read about it a lot in books so it seems over done sometimes. I also really liked the end of the book. Compared to the end of the Golden Compass, this ending was a lot better. In the end of the Golden Compass you wanted to read more but it wasn't really a cliff hanger. This was not the case with the Subtle Knife. The end was a cliff hanger and I basically ran to get the next book because the end sucked me into the next book even before I started it. Altogether though, I loved the book and am about to start the next one!