The windows between the many worlds have been sealed, and the momentous adventures of Lyra Silvertongue's youth are long behind her—or so she thought. Lyra is now a 20-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia's College, and intrigue is swirling around her once more. Her daemon, Pantalaimon, is witness to a murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past. In this second part of the trilogy for readers 9 to 12 that began with La Belle Sauvage, Lyra and her mentor Malcolm Polstead will travel into the Levant, searching for a city haunted by daemons, and a desert said to hold the truth of Dust.

"Pullman's writing is clear, clean and forceful, never striving for effect and all the more effective because of it. He's also a man of ideas, which gives great savor to his work."—Wall Street Journal