I’m glad that I was able to grab this book right away after finishing The Golden Compass because I don’t know what I would have done otherwise. I raced through this book, absolutely devouring each page. I think I finished it in a day or two and I read it so quickly after The Golden Compass that I was debating putting the two together in a book review. However, the plots differ quite a bit and I felt that it was unfair to the author to lump them together even if they were a delight to devour one after the other. This book was just as magical to me as The Golden Compass. Pullman creates new main characters that he is able to masterfully tie into the main storyline as if they were meant to be there all along. It makes me wonder if he had mapped out the wider story before writing The Golden Compass or if it was the product of workshopping various ideas together to fill out Lyra’s universe. Either way, what a book! It did get a little confusing at points because Pullman introduces SO much new material in this book and just expects the reader to absorb it as quickly as he’s writing it. In order to clarify things, let me explain the plot briefly to help you get your bearings a little better.

By the end of the first book, Lord Asriel has jumped into another world and Lyra decides to pursue. However, she ends up in an entirely different world, our own. She meets a young boy, Will, and they begin to search for Will’s father, John Parry. Still in Lyra’s world, the witches and Lee Scoresby seek out Lyra by any means possible. Lee Scoresby searches for Stanislaus Grumman in an effort to locate an entrance into the world where Lyra is. At the end, all are reunited, Grumman, Lyra, Will, and the witches but all is not what it seems. Meanwhile, Lyra is still being pursued by the dreadful Mrs. Coulter and has to evade her minions throughout the book. The hallmark of this new book is the world hopping, which Will and Lyra do multiple times in an effort to evade their enemies. This world hopping can be disorienting to the reader but Pullman describes each new world with a few specific clues that readers can use to distinguish where Lyra and Will have ended up. Pullman does a great job of giving each of these worlds their own characteristics and paints a rich picture of a multiverse where Lyra and Will can traverse across many unique worlds. I loved this book just as much as The Golden Compass and hope that my readers get the chance to read this book as well as The Golden Compass. I would recommend against reading the books out of order as you may lack crucial information from the previous book. Happy Reading!