Twelve-year-old Lyra Belacqua lives unparented and half-wild among the scholars of Jordan College. One day her uncle Lord Asriel, an experimental theologian and explorer, arrives with terrifying news from the north. Impelled at first by her own curiosity, but soon pursued by appalling dangers, Lyra is drawn into a savage struggle among the armoured bears and witch-clans of the Arctic, where a scientific research station is carrying out experiments too horrible to be spoken about. In order to survive at all, she must leave her childhood behind and venture where no one has gone before - beyond the Northern Lights.
