His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman. It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC’s The Big Read poll.
About His Dark Materials in brief
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman. It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC’s The Big Read poll. The title of the series comes from 17th-century poet John Milton’s Paradise Lost: Into this wilde Abyss,The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,But all these in their pregnant causes mixt Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,Unless th’ Almighty Maker them ordainHis dark materials to create more Worlds. — Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 910–920. Pullman chose this particular phrase from Milton because it echoed the dark matter of astrophysics. La Belle Sauvage, the first book in a new trilogy titled The Book of Dust, was published on 19 October 2017; the second book of the new trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth was published in October 2019. Both are set in the same universe as Northern Lights. A BBC television series based on the novels commenced broadcast in November 2019. The dominant religion has parallels with Christianity. The Church exerts a strong control over society and has some of the appearance and organisation of the Catholic Church, but one in which the centre of power had moved from Rome to Geneva, moved there by Pullman’s fictional \”Pope John Calvin\”.
In The Subtle Knife, the story moves between the world of the first novel, our own world, and another world, the city of Cittàgazze. In Jordan College, 11-year-old Lyra witnesses an attempt to poison Lord Pantalaimon, the Master of the Master. She warns Asriel, her rebellious and adventuring uncle, about his mysterious elementary particles. The Master entrusts her with an alethiometer, a truth-telling device. Lyra discovers that Mrs Coulter is a leader of the Gobblers, a secret society funded by the Gyptians, a group of child abductors known as the \”Gobblers\” Lyra is adopted by a charming socialite, The Master’s wife, Mrs Coulter, and her adopted son, Asriel. The book is set in a world with some similarities to our own: dress-style resembles that of the UK’s Edwardian era; the technology does not include cars or fixed-wing aircraft, but zeppelins feature as a mode of transport. In Northern Lights, the world is similar to ours, but with a different religion, the Church. In the book Lyra’s friend Roger is kidnapped by the gyptians and it is revealed that it is secretly funded by a socialite known as The Master.
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