Just Finished Reading: Lyra’s Oxford by Philip Pullman

Lyra never suspects anything is wrong when a witch’s daemon asks her for help. Her human counterpart is desperately ill and only one man – a dabbler in the esoteric arts – can produce the potion to save her life. But when Lyra leads it/her to the man in question it soon becomes obvious that she has been tricked and that her life is in mortal danger.

This is a lovely little book – though actually hardly more than a short story at only 48 pages – whose tale takes place not long after the adventures of Lyra and Will in the authors famous (or would that be notorious) Dark Materials series is a delight. Not only does it drop the reader back into that ‘magical’ universe it also provides some hard ‘evidence’ that can be examined at leisure including a fold-out map of that alternate Oxford which has, I discovered, many close correspondences with the ‘real’ Oxford, a postcard sent by Mary Malone and cruise details of the S. S. Zenobia which has yet to appear (IIRC) in any of the Dark Materials books. Despite all of this fascinating items however, the book did leave me slightly more exasperated that Pullman has yet to produce anything more substantial, especially the long awaited Book of Dust. Basically this is fun but is also a sweet and subtle torture. Read it at your peril.