Lyra is a chick from a world not unlike our own, but totally different in a few important ways. For instance, in Lyra’s world, your conscience and soul takes the form of a real, living thing, usually an animal — and it can assume any animal shape it chooses. And there are armed polar bears that talk, and good witches that are immortal and never get cold. But other than that, its pretty much the same. The problem here is that Lyra, who’s a pretty inquisitive kid, gets wind of a nasty little plot where scientists in the North Pole are doing experiments on kids and their soul embodiments, or deamons. The experiments have something to do with a mysterious substance called Dust (with a capital D!) that Lyra has heard about from her explorer uncle and she’s bound and determined to find out what’s going on. Before it’s all over, she and her own daemon, Pantalaimon come close to getting the ax. The book is so good, you won’t want it to end — and guess what, it doesn’t! The two sequels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, continues Lyra’s adventure. Want to know what your daemon would be? Take the daemon quiz from the Golden Compass movie website and find out!
