The Amber Spyglass
Lyra and Will are in unspeakable danger. With help from the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison and two tiny Gallivespian spies, they must journey to a gray-lit world where no living soul has ever dared to venture before. Meanwhile, Dr. Mary Malone is building a magnificent amber spyglass when an assassin hunts her down. And Lord Asriel, with troops of shining angels, fights his mighty rebellion, a battle of strange allies - and shocking sacrifices.
As war rages and Dust drains from the sky, the fate of the living - and the dead - finally comes to depend on two children and the truth behind one simple story.
Locus Award Nominee for Best Fantasy Novel (2001); Whitbread Award for Children's Book of the Year and Book of the Year (2001); British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year (2001); West Australian Young Readers' Book Award (WAYRBA) for Older Readers (2002)
About the His Dark Materials Series
Books in series order
- 1.Northern Lights (The Golden Compass)(1995)
- 2.The Subtle Knife(1997)
- 3.The Amber Spyglass(2000)
- +Lyra's Oxford(2003)
- +Once Upon A Time in the North(2008)
Reading age: 10+ years
This series should be read in order.
In a world as convincing and thoroughly realised as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall, lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her.
Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument known as the Golden Compass. All around her children are disappearing - victims of so-called 'Gobblers' - and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.