Pullman’s humanistic vision remains as powerful as ever, with modern capitalism, attacks on the environment and soul-destroying conditions of work the major threats facing his characters and by implication the rest of us too.

With this novel Philip Pullman’s two mighty trilogies come to their end. His enduring heroine Lyra remains, trying to understand what exactly constitutes Dust, the vital ingredient for life under threat from assorted villainous quarters. But now the heady references to Milton and the whole question of Original Sin that once gave her initial adventures such an urgent extra dimension of meaning are no more. The Magisterium, the ruthless ultra-Calvinist conspiracy out for world domination, is also a shadow of its former sinister self. References to Jordan College, Oxford, are gone as are descriptions of Brytain, a country rather like our own but also different in numbers of ways.

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