The Amber Spyglass

From the very start of its very first scene, The Amber Spyglass will set hearts fluttering and minds racing. All well say here is that we immediately discover who captured Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, though weve yet to discern whether this individuals intent is good, evil, or somewhere in between. We also learn that Will still possesses the blade that allows him to cut between worlds, and has been joined by two winged companions who are determined to escort him to Lord Asriels mountain redoubt. The boy, however, has only one goal in mind–to rescue his friend and return to her the alethiometer, an instrument that has revealed so much to her and to readers of The Golden Compass and its follow-up. Within a short time, too, we get to experience the “tingle of the starlight” on Serafina Pekkalas skin as she seeks out a famished Iorek Byrnison and enlists him in Lord Asriels crusade:
A complex web of thoughts was weaving itself in the bear kings mind, with more strands in it than hunger and satisfaction. There was the memory of the little girl Lyra, whom he had named Silvertongue, and whom he had last seen crossing the fragile snow bridge across a crevasse in his own island of Svalbard. Then there was the agitation among the witches, the rumors of pacts and alliances and war; and then there was the surpassingly strange fact of this new world itself, and the witchs insistence that there were many more such worlds, and that the fate of them all hung somehow on the fate of the child.