A little recap of Book 1, Northern Lights (just to get you hooked):

Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford’s Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing—victims of so-called “Gobblers”—and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person’s inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.

I started this series because of the movie ‘The Golden Compass.’ I LOVED the movie and thought I would love the books just as much. But I didn’t. The first two books were alright but the third was just downright boring! This is because I was 11 and kept skipping chapters to read only about Lyra and not Mrs Coulter. But because I am determined to never leave a book unfinished, 5 years later I gave it another try and I LOVED IT!!! The ending especially was something I’ll never forget. It just made me keep reading, and reading, and reading. It is so perfect, so beautiful and so sad. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. The end is the reason I love this series so much. I definitely recommend it as a truly great story.

~Steph, QBD Strathpine