Charges of Geresy

Brilliant book. Really liked the new characters Malcolm and Alice, as is characteristic of Pullman a strong female character. Pullman has a habit of putting forward strong religious or ethical ideas in the form of storytelling, and this book is no different – albeit slightly darker than usual.
In fact the darkness was the thing that surprised me about this book. It starts off quite normal, with the usual intrigue and mystery, but then progressively gets very dark.
Apparently the tale makes reference to the story of Noah, which I surprisingly didn’t take notice of the first time I read the book. I was more focused on the similarity of the three main characters to the protagonists of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, especially the parallels between the behaviour of Lyra and Sunny.
You won’t be disappointed if you expect this to be a shadow of His Dark Materials – in fact it is just as good, told in the same gripping fashion.