Philip Pullman is the famed author that wrote the His Dark Materials trilogy over 20 years ago. I know nothing about it, but my girlfriend loves this series because she’s a nerd. The story follows Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they travel through some parallel universes and deal with polar bears, an underutilized animal in fantasy. There are elements of theology and ideology as well, as the story touches heavily on religion. It all sounds really confusing to a simple man like myself who prefers to read US Weekly.
This is all important because Pullman announced the follow-up to the trilogy, The Book of Dust. The first installment of the Book of Dust will take place before the events of the His Dark Materials trilogy, while the next two installments will take place ten years after those events.
In an interview with NPR, Pullman said:
“It doesn’t stand before or after His Dark Materials, but beside it,” Pullman explained. “It’s a different story, but there are settings that readers of His Dark Materials will recognize and characters they’ve met before.” The trilogy will tell the larger story of struggle between the Magisterium and “those who believe thought and speech should be free. That’s what I really wanted to explore in this new work,” he told NPR. “More about the nature of Dust, and consciousness, and what it means to be a human being.”
The first book comes out October 21, which means I know what I’m getting my girlfriend for her birthday.