This is the first book in the Northern Lights trilogy, a fantasy series set in a different version of the Earth in the nineteenth century, where every human has their own dæmon companion.
The story follows a loveable twelve year old girl named Lyra. At first, Lyra just has fun playing around with her dæmon Pantalaimon and her friends at Jordan College. I should point out that, she’s not a student there, she’s too young for that, she just lives there because her uncle (who looks after her) works there. Lyra learns about a mysterious substance known as ‘Dust’ (and it’s not just regular old dust) and children start mysteriously disappearing. Lyra is then sent away and, before long, finds herself on a long journey involving a race of intelligent bears and a very dark conspiracy…
One particular aspect that I enjoyed were the dæmons themselves. In the world of this novel, when a human is born, they suddenly have a dæmon companion who will stay with them for the rest of their life. They assume the form of a small animal and are fully sentient. Humans and dæmons love each other very much and, in fact, there is a strong kind of connection between them which means that, they physically cannot be separated without extreme emotional and mental anguish to both of them. They say, in fact, that anybody separated from their dæmon would surely die…
On the whole this is a book with many appeals: it’s set in a world where things are different, so it’s always interesting to see how the things we know have changed (such as The Bible), human and dæmon interactions can be simply adoreable, Lyra is a very likeable main character and there’s a big mystery too, you’ll find yourself trying to piece together all the clues you get as it goes along. As this is the first in a trilogy, the story is not over at the end of the novel and, I, at least, was left eagerly wanting to read the next!
Rating: 8.6/10
