Lyra and her daemon, Pan, have lives their wholes lives in Jordan College, Oxford. Lyra has been raised by the scholars there and has grown up half-wild, not listening to authority, always getting into trouble, not the well-behaved little girl the scholars hoped she'd be. While her uncle, Lord Asriel, is visiting the college to ask for funding for his latest expedition, Lyra hides in a wardrobe and hears all about the possibility of other worlds, which Lord Asriel wishes to explore, and about Dust. With amazing alternate universes, scholars, witches, daemons, armoured bears, Gyptians and anything else you could possibly imagine, Pullman takes you on an incredibly journey from Jordan College to the arctic to see the Northern Lights. And the adventure you have with Lyra on the way there is unforgettable. This is one of my all time favourite books. It is the first of His Dark Materials trilogy and is an incredible, and dare I say, life-changing, read for young teens. It really is that good!

This is one of my all time favourite trilogies and I try and re-read the books once a year. I love everything about them, from the incredible world building and the ideas behind the parallel worlds, to the amazing cast of characters; some that I love, and some that I love to hate! Lyra is the ultimate heroine; she is just a normal girl, but at the same time it's her normalcy that makes her so special as she is trust into situations and worlds that are truly incredible. She fights for survival, she fights for justice and she fights for what she believes in and she won't let anything or anyone stand in her way. As the trilogy progresses the worlds and the story become darker and the danger becomes ever more present, but as this happens, the level of interest in the story intensifies beyond belief. I feel sad that some people base their perceptions of this trilogy on the golden compass film because it did not do justice to how incredible this story is. This is the kind of trilogy that you really just need to read for yourself because once you have read it all the way through you will be so astonished by how complex and amazing it is that you will want all your friends to read it and you will want to read it over and over again! A fantastic and spellbinding series that deserves to be read for many years to come.

I really enjoyed reading a story with a great female character around my age. I loved reading about her Oxford, and then following her on her journey North. The daemon was a great way to tell us what she was thinking and feeling. My other favourite characters were Serafina Pekkala and Iorek Byrnison.

Awsome series of book that I think a book lover will love. Great story telling and characters and plot and every think. I have seen the series and I loved reading the books because it was well out of the ordinary witch I loved completely. Great series.

Pullman's incredible imagination, exciting characters and absorbing narrative translate into a book which can be read across all ages. His poetical references and stimuli to William Blake's 'Innocence and Experience' and John Milton's 'Paradice Lost' create a strong concept around the 'innocence' of growing up and the 'experience' of adulthood. Every child and adult should read this literary inspiration.