17 years since Philip Pullman concluded His Dark Materials trilogy, the author has announced The Book of Dust, a new trilogy set in the same universe as The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.
On Pullman's website, the author explains that the first volumes feature heroine Lyra Belacqua in two periods of her life - as a child and 10 years following the climax of the first trilogy. The new fantasy series will include characters fans will be familiar with.
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"…is it a prequel? Is it a sequel? It's neither," Pullman writes. "In fact, The Book of Dust is… an equel. It doesn't stand before or after His Dark Materials, but beside it. It's a different story, but there are settings that readers of His Dark Materials will recognise, and characters they've met before. Also, of course, there are some characters who are new to us, including an ordinary boy (a boy we have seen in an earlier part of Lyra's story, if we were paying attention) who, with Lyra, is caught up in a terrifying adventure that takes him into a new world."
Pullman went on: "…why return to Lyra's world? Dust. Questions about that mysterious and troubling substance were already causing strife 10 years before His Dark Materials, and at the centre of The Book of Dust is the struggle between a despotic and totalitarian organisation, which wants to stifle speculation and enquiry, and those who believe thought and speech should be free. The idea of Dust suffused His Dark Materials. Little by little through that story the idea of what Dust was became clearer and clearer, but I always wanted to return to it and discover more."
The first book of the untitled The Book of Dust trilogy will be available on October 19, 2017.
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