His Dark Materials

Presenting Philip Pullman's stunning His Dark Materials trilogy in a single, beautiful, Everyman Library volume. You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn’t argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can’t choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I’m free. It begins with a girl and her daemon. The girl is Lyra Belacqua, an orphan who lives in a place like (and yet unlike) Oxford, in a parallel universe in which science, theology and magic are bound together in a sometimes dark union.In the opening volume Northern Lights, Lyra finds herself bound up in a daring game of cat-and-mouse that will see her on the run from the highest authorities, hunting for the secret that lies behind the kidnapping of children. It is a hunt that will take her far from Oxford, to high-society London and the home of the mysterious and beautiful Mrs Coulter. Beyond, the journey will take Lyra to the home of the witches and the kingdom of the ice bears where the aurora awaits. And at the end of everything, there is the Dust. In The Subtle Knife, Lyra is joined by Will, a boy who is destined to possess a knife that can cut windows between worlds and their two lives become inextricably and irrevocably intertwined. As Lyra learns the truth about her parents and her prophesied destiny, the two young people are caught up in a war against celestial powers that ranges across many worlds, leading to the thrilling and transformative conclusion that is The Amber Spyglass. The epic story Pullman tells is not only a spellbinding adventure featuring armoured polar bears, magical devices, witches, daemons and aeronauts, it is also an audacious and profound re-imagining of Milton's Paradise Lost. An utterly entrancing blend of metaphysical speculation and bravura storytelling, His Dark Materials is a monumental and enduring achievement, an enduring classic about love, war, the nature of human being and the power of storytelling. ‘Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings at all.’ - Philip Pullman About His Dark Materials: Published by Scholastic between 1995 and 2000, the His Dark Materials trilogy is widely regarded as a modern classic and is probably the series Waterstones’ booksellers most frequently cite as their favourite. Its heroine, Lyra Belacqua, frequently tops polls as an all-time favourite character, appearing in the Top 10 Favourite Heroes on World Book Day 2016. As New Statesman wrote of the trilogy: “Once in a lifetime a children’s author emerges who is so extraordinary that the imagination of generations is altered… The most ambitious work since The Lord of the Rings, [His Dark Materials] is as intellectually thrilling as it is magnificently written.”