2025 recap

So this year I read sixty-three books, a marked boost from the previous couple of years. But what is it I actually read? That is what this post is for. So:

• a collection of essays by C.S. Lewis, as well as his apologetics on pain & miracles, and finally his Space trilogy
• Luther's catechisms for children & grownups
• a fantastic biography of Scotland's national bard
• not one but two essays from Enlightenment thinker Thomas Paine
• Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea cycle, as well as not one but two of her sci-fi works
• Immanuel Kant's political philosophy
• a very difficult book about the nature of gender
• T.H. White's The Once and Future King series
• Eoin Colfer's attempt at the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series
• Artemis Fowl
• a very helpful introductory textbook to formal logic
• a brilliantly entertaining book of sci-fi poetry by my friend Ian
• not one but two poetry collections from Noel Williams
• a superb collection of poetry for children
• in the Warhammer 40,000 universe - a stomping epic & a comedic trilogy
• works in the philosophy of science more reserved & more anarchistic
• a remarkable landscape of human civilisation & its trajectory
• the poetry & short stories of my late friend David Brookes
• an astonishingly prophetic text from Kierkegaard
• a middling novel
• a book that was far less radical than I expected it to be
• J.S. Mill's essay on liberty
• Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy
• a Tolkien book you've probably never heard of (I hadn't!)
• 101 Zen tales
• 10-second sermons
• a book from the masterful Tim Chester about enjoying God
• a poetry collection by Michael Rosen that I have probably read at least 20 times as a kid & still holds up

   Anyway, that's me done for 2025. I'd also like to announce here that now I'm completely finished with my backlog (the "to-read" pile) and so now can read whatever I want! So expect a much more focusedly eclectic listing in next year's recap.

   Anyway,

   Peace & love

   Isaac Stovell

10 Second Sermons

This book by comedian Milton Jones is a collection of (as the title implies) very short reflections on various dimensions of Christian life and faith. Most are at least chuckle-worthy and more than a few are laugh-out-loud funny; despite being so entertaining it is also quite consistently thought-provoking, offering sharp sideways insight into Christianity that can be quite disarming. I'd heartily recommend this book as a gift to a Christian friend who you know likes to laugh and think at the same time.

the Hypnotiser

This book is a collection of very amusing poetry by the inimitable Michael Rosen (and illustrated by Andrew Tiffen, whose style is charmingly reminiscent of Quentin Blake).

   It belongs to my dad so I've taken the opportunity to binge-reread it while I'm staying with my family over the holidays - it's the first time I've reread it in well over a decade but I must have read this book twenty times growing up.* The poems are all free verse and incredibly readable, making this a great book for children who are just starting to explore poetry. Their content varies from short absurd skits to reflections on a theme or object (the two-parter about tomatoes I really identify with), to longer more anecdotal pieces (alongside the one about Richard at school who could hypnotise people, hence the title of the book, probably my favourite of these ones is the story about his brother taking him to London Airport on his birthday when he needed a wee) that draw on Rosen's experiences of both childhood and parenthood. His brother Brian and his step-daughter Laura both emerge from this collection as distinct, consistent and entertaining characters in their own right.

   Although I think it's out of print these days this is still a brilliant collection of comedic children's poetry and if you find a copy in a charity shop or on eBay ever you should absolutely snaffle it up - read it yourself first and then give it to a kid who will almost certainly get a kick out of it. They'll thank you.

* It's probably a strong contender for the book owned by my family that has been reread the most times. Certainly the state of the physical object will suggest such, as its spine has almost entirely fallen apart and more than half the pages have resultingly come loose. You have to be careful reading it that they don't all slip out all over the place.

Enjoying God

This book is another straight-up easy-to-read edifying banger from Tim Chester, who has made a habit of writing that kind of book. I've just binged it in more or less one sitting, which is particularly impressive at it's Christmas Day so to find such an uninterrupted run of free time is frankly shocking* - I'm staying back at my family's house for the holidays and this book was on the shelves of the absent lodger whose room (which is technically my old room anyway) I am temporarily occupying, so I decided to borrow** it as it's been a while since I read a theology book by myself.

   The book is organised in an extremely straightforward and helpful way. The first couple of chapters are largely introductory, initially opening a broad discussion of what we mean when we say or feel that we want more of God, before conducting a brief examination of what we mean when we say or feel that we're experiencing joy. Then the meat of the book is arranged into nine chapters, three for each Person of the Trinity, walking attentively through ways in which God breaks into our lives in the everyday and thus can be enjoyably related to therein. We enjoy the Father's generosity in every pleasure, His formation in every hardship, His welcome in every prayer; we enjoy Christ's grace in every failure, his presence in every pain, his touch in every supper; we enjoy the Holy Spirit's life in every temptation, her hope in every groan, her voice in every word. Following this, before a perfunctory concluding chapter, are a final pair discussing how we can enjoy God's love through one another and enjoy God's freedom through daily repentance and faith.

   As is his wont in his depth of distilled wisdom and insight, Chester has stuffed every one of these chapters chock-full of dense complex theological ideas - communicated helpfully in language that a twelve-year old could engage with without difficulty. I always recommend Tim Chester's books and this is no different - if your walk with God has started to feel a bit too austere, too ordinary, too rote, this book could be a great resource to kickstart your heart a bit in the direction of attentively and gratefully enjoying God for who He is more. Highly recommended reading for all Christians but especially if you're going through a bit of a slump.

* To be fair Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was on in the background.

** Cheers Bethan - though you'll likely never know.

Tao Te Ching

This book is the ancient text attributed to the probably-legendary Lao Tzu, and forms the foundation of Taoist philosophy. Check out the link at the start of this post for my main thoughts on it from the last time I read it - something that I now plan on re-doing every year, as there is much to be mined from this beautiful, elusive, deeply mysterious little book.

Imprint

This book is Kathryn Millington's debut poetry pamphlet. Kathryn is a recent newcomer to the spoken word night I host, and my mum happened to be in attendance at the first event Kathryn performed at, and really liked her work - so I've bought Kathryn's pamphlet as an early Christmas present for my mum. I've just read the whole thing through to get a better feel of it but I'm sure my mum will enjoy the collection considerably. All the poems contained herein deal with the oft-neglected grief and trauma of involuntary childlessness; loss and longing positively drip off every stanza. This Is Disenfranchised Grief is probably the central poem of the pamphlet, walking heartrendingly through the detachment and homelessness of feeling for these women. Short but powerful, this is a very strong poetry collection - highly recommended for those who either share or want to better empathise with the condition with which these poems deal.

101 Zen Tales

This book is, as it says on the tin, one hundred and one short stories circling and elucidating the mysterious Buddhist doctrine of Zen, edited by Nyogen Senzaki (at least I'm assuming Senzaki was primarily the editor but could feasibly have taken part in translating or rewording the stories themselves). As nobody familiar with Zen will be surprised by, these tales are all pithy and paradoxical, counter-intuitive, almost anarchic little parables about the nature of reality, wisdom, enlightenment, religion, and so on, each short provocation an opportunity to ever-increasingly turn one's back on what is known or predictable or even respectable, and to instead embrace the simplicity and emptiness of the Zen way. I'd highly recommend this as a resource more for anyone who wants to sincerely engage with Zen as a spiritual way of life rather than for anyone who wants to properly understand it as a religious philosophy (something that most Zen masters would likely look down upon as a pursuit anyway) - it will make you confused as much as it will make you laugh, and along the way it may help you shed the trappings of constrictive but unconstructive rationality, and walk ever further down one of the many paths of enlightenment.

the Lord of the Rings: book four

This book is the second part of the second book in J. R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I am still very enjoyably reworking my way through by means of TolkienTrash's weekly chapter streams.

That Hideous Strength

This book* is the final instalment in C.S. Lewis's Space trilogy (see here for the first & second ones) - and whooo boy, is it a stonker. It's very different from the first two - being longer than both of them put together, much darker in tone & content, with several dozen characters rather than the less-than-ten of the prior instalments, and whereas books one & two developed their sci-fi themes by entailing the visiting of other planets & conversing with alien species in this one we are restricted to three or four small rural English towns; it also somewhat straddles the line between sci-fi & fantasy as the machinations of the eldila manifest much more strongly. As is my wont with series, this being the third book of the trilogy, I will endeavour to give a quick [spoiler-free] summary of the plot before diving into some broader reflections on the characters, themes, etc. of the series as a whole.

   So - the story. We follow a young married couple, Mark & Jane Studdock. Mark is a fellow of sociology at Bracton College, in the small [fictional] university town of Edgestow; Jane is currently working through a doctorate on John Donne [the 17th-century metaphysical poet]. Bracton is currently facing a dilemma over its dealings with the NICE [the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments; nice acronym, Lewis] who want to purchase land off it for reasons unclear. Mark is, by and by, brought by his associate Feverstone [slight spoiler alert - this is Devine from the first book] into direct contact and possibly employment by the NICE: though the more time Mark spends in that world the more questions he has about its moral intent. Jane, meanwhile, has started having clairvoyant dreams: after seeking help for this she is brought into contact with a ragtag collective of people following some indiscernible purpose under the stewardship of a man called the Director [spoiler alert - this is Dr Ransom from the first two books]. Tensions are high, the stakes keep getting raised, questions go unanswered, the pride of science & bureaucracy rear their monstrous heads, and the mounting conspiracy rolls us with a tremendous crescendo throughout the course of the plot. Oh yeh, and Merlin's knocking about somewhere, and both NICE and Ransom's collective want to get him on their side.

   Lewis did in fact intend this novel as an imaginative exploration of the ideas he presented in his essays The Abolition of Man, but I think they come through far more clearly & powerfully here than they did in his non-fiction. The themes of man's struggle with/against nature [including, in the final event, human nature] in the light of cold reason & the essentiality of moral truth, given the chaos that questioning it too skeptically can induce, are both explored here with prosaic perfection. Other remarks I will make about this novel specifically are that Mr. Bultitude is the greatest fictional bear I have ever encountered, "the Head" is truly horrifying as a quasi-impotent villain, Lewis's Merlin is the most original Merlin I have seen in book or on screen, the Inklings** get a couple of generous hat-tips (eg. Tolkien's Numénor is referenced several times as "the true original West" [albeit spelled "Numinor" by Lewis] & Barfield gets a mention without even changing his name), and chapter fourteen ends with the best description of a mystical experience I have ever read outside of actual mystics' own works.

   But what of the series as a whole? I have to say, despite this third one being such a dramatic superficial departure from the first two, the thematic coherence presented across all three is remarkably tight, and builds organically in a truly epic manner. The ideas of innocence, Fallenness, experience, redemption, etc. are explored with poetic precision - one could easily write a PhD digging into the metaphysical & theological dimensions of this trilogy's world. Lewis here is at his best, most inventive writing self; whether the floral beauty of the descriptive passages in Perelandra, the alien strangeness of the races on Malacandra, the unutterable transcendence of the eldila & especially the Oyarsas, the turns of deft phrasing that convey complex feelings exactly, the purposed depth of the dialogue - this trilogy might be the best thing Lewis ever wrote, because not only does it make a heap of philosophically & religiously chewy points, but it also works as a coherent compelling story in its own right. Mark & Jane, as Weston, as Devine, as the several-dozen other characters in the third one [especially Mrs. Ironwood & "the Fairy" Hardcastle] are rich & believable; and at the beating heart of the cast Dr. Ransom undergoes a prodigious character arc over the course of the trilogy, from unassuming academic to a sage who converses with archangels, but he never loses the sense of being a somewhat relatable everyman for the audience to cling to as the worlds are unveiled. There are also curious ruminations on the nature of gender particularly in the second and third books, but I won't start unpicking that here.

   I absolutely loved reading this trilogy. Lewis is as well known for his incredibly insightful & edifying Christian apologetics but is most famous for The Chronicles of Narnia - but call it writing better for adults [rude] this trilogy is in my opinion far superior in its potency of theme & display of imagination & even prose style. I would highly recommend these books to anyone who enjoys a good sci-fi and/or fantasy adventure that's as thought-provoking as it is unpredictable: and while to be sure there are overt Christian messages littered throughout, these are not polemical or evangelical in form & are so well-integrated into the overall fabric of the story that even Philip Pullman would have to admit it's not unreasonable to have them in there.

* Certainly not to be confused with this terrible book of the same title.

** The Inklings were an informal club of creative Oxford academics of whom Lewis was a core member, alongside J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and others. They used to meet weekly at The Eagle and Child [nice pub if you're ever in Oxford and fancy a pint where great minds have been] to discuss their works and ideas.

Perelandra

This book by C.S. Lewis is the second in his Space trilogy (see here for the first - as always with my posts about series I am here going to give a spoiler-free[ish] summary of the plot, reserving my reflections on the characters & themes for the post about the last one).

   We open with the narrator, Lewis (an obvious author self-insert if ever I saw one) recounting his recent visit to his friend Dr. Elwin Ransom, the protagonist. Ransom is mysteriously abducted & then returned & then recounts his travels to Lewis, which is from where we get the prose narrative of the majority of the book. Ransom had been taken to Perelandra (i.e. Venus) by the eldila, where, after a few chapters of frankly gorgeous scenic descriptive passages, he finally meets another humanoid - the 'Green Lady' as she is called. Ransom & the Green Lady have a shared language thanks to Ransom's time on Malacandra [Mars] but little shared in terms of communicable concepts, given the essential innocence of the Lady's world. In no short order though, Professor Weston (as in the antagonist of the first book) lands on Perelandra in his space-ship, and soon learns of the single divine command given to the Lady and the only other sentient inhabitant of this world, whom she calls 'the King', that they are never to spend a night on fixed land.* Weston, whom Ransom almost immediately perceives as to be under devilish control,** spends several chapters whispering poison to the Lady to doubt & thus eventually transcend this command of Maleldil, combated rhetorically (and eventually physically) by Ransom. I don't want to spoil the ending so I will leave off here, about halfway through the book, but let me assure you that when we finally meet 'the King' and realise the metaphysical & eschatological implications of a world having narrowly escaped its 'Fall' (to use a classical Christian term) the sublimity of the descriptive passages reaches new undreamt-of heights. Truly a great book with much on the nature of innocence, obedience, and sin to provoke deep thought.

   The third book in the trilogy is almost twice as long as this one, but I'm enjoying them so much that I might finish it sooner that expected. In any case, watch this space for my overall ruminations on the trilogy.

* As Perelandra is basically an ocean planet, with the vast majority of its 'land' being free-floating vegetative islands, with the exception of a tiny minority of 'fixed' land that is rooted to the spot amid the roiling oceans.

** The devil, or "The Bent One" as known in trans-solar language, is in these books a real metaphysical entity determined to sway sentient beings away from the will of Maleldil, a.k.a. God. I have to say that Lewis's descriptive depictions of evil as it is in this book is just as horrifying & unsettling as his more beauteous description of the Perelandran landscapes are edifying & inspiring. Why couldn't he have brought this style of prose to Narnia? As imaginative as it may well be, I can't help but affirm that Lewis is letting his imagination find much greater fruit here in his sci-fi for adults than he ever did in his fantasy for children. Which is a shame.

Out of the Silent Planet

This book is the first instalment of C.S. Lewis's Space trilogy. As is my wont when dealing with series, in this post I will only give a rough [spoiler-free] sketch of the story & reserve my broader reflections on characters/themes/etc for the post about the final book.

   We are introduced to Dr. Ransom, a Cambridge philologist on a walking holiday. Quite by chance he bumps into an old schoolmate whom he cordially dislikes, named Devine, and his associate, an eminent physicist named Weston. The pair invite Ransom back for a drink, and - lo! - he finds himself drugged. Ransom wakes up on a spaceship headed for the planet Malacandra [spoiler alert - it's Mars] where his captors intend to sell him as a sacrifice to the planet's locals in exchange for precious objects. Upon arrival however, Ransom manages to escape their clutches, and soon finds himself embroiled in a rambling, largely aimless adventure during which he is introduced one-by-one to the three sentient races peopling Malacandra - the seal-like poets, hrossa; the spindly-humanoid thinkers, sorns; and the frog-like masons, pfifltriggi. Each of these alien races are deliciously well-sketched in both physiology & culture, displaying an imagination far beyond the folklore-lucky-dip population of Narnia, to make a harsh but fair comparison with Lewis's other forays into imaginative fiction. Ransom spends long enough with these locals to get to grips with their language, but when Devine & Weston shoot dead the hross whom he had best befriended, he is prompted to go on a solitary quest in pursuit of the eldila, spiritual-ish beings who are revered on Malacandra, and who the locals think it is important Ransom explain himself to. We find out why in the final few chapters, in which the conflicting philosophies of Malacandra & the silent planet Thulcandra [i.e. Earth] are brought into colourful dialogue.

   I really enjoyed this book* - it has a lot of really interesting anthropological & ethical reflections littered casually throughout, and is told in lively immersive prose; I look forward to reading the next two books soon.

* Arguably not as much as I apparently did the first time I tried to read it, though that was back in the summer of 2020 while I was midway through a psychotic break - as is evidenced by the insanely dense underlinings & annotations on the first five or so pages [as well as pages 42-3 for some reason] of my copy of this book.

Mr. Bliss

This book is a J. R. R. Tolkien work that I before receiving a copy for my birthday* from my eldest brother I had had no idea existed. He wrote it as entertainment for his children when they were young - each page of the book is a scan of his own original handwriting** plus basic but entertaining illustrations by Tolkien himself. The story itself is incredibly simple - Mr. Bliss buys a car and gets into a series of minor inconveniences which strung together pass as a legitimate if somewhat mundane adventure. It's not particularly inventive or clever but I imagine it would work as a bedtime read for children between three and six. That's where I'll leave my recommendation - this book is probably only worth reading if you are of, or are reading to someone of, that age; though that said anyone with an interest in Tolkien will get some degree of tickle out of the sheer quaintness of this little book, the story*** as much as the pictures.

* I turned thirty-two yesterday. Cash and gifts to be sent to my PO box.

** Which is a lot neater than you may expect if you've ever heard Tolkien speak in recordings (man was a mumbler).

*** I wanted to mention this but didn't leave any gaps for an appropriate segue in the main body of this post - Mr. Bliss has a pet girabbit. You know, part giraffe part rabbit. Other than anthropomorphised bears this is the only fantastical element to be found in the book.

the Dispossessed

This book is a sci-fi utopia from the endlessly inventive mind of Ursula K. Le Guin. It's widely regarded as her best, and though personally I still prefer the Earthsea cycle, I can easily see why.

   So - the book itself. We follow Shevek, a physicist on the verge of developing a new theory of time that could revolutionize relations between distant worlds. He is from Anarres, an anarchistic planet, though through the book we skip between flashbacks here to the present on Urras, a capitalistic (although in the book they use the term "propertarian") planet from which the Anarresti had emigrated some couple of centuries prior. Shevek is hell-bent on developing & disseminating his theory of time, but bureaucratic blockages block his efforts on both Annares & Urras. I will yield from giving spoilers, so here ends my summary.

   Overall this is a fantastic work - a very enjoyable, page-turning sci-fi that asks many curious questions about the nature of freedom, power, solidarity, and livelihood. Very highly recommended.

the Left Hand of Darkness

This book is quite probably Ursula K. Le Guin's most famous work (outside of Earthsea, of course), and rightly considered a modern sci-fi classic. I have a huge amount I could say about this novel but I think it speaks for itself so well that I will not give it the disservice of an attempt at a full reflection in a mere blogpost & instead simply urge you to read it; whether you're a fan of sci-fi or not - this is just a masterfully told, powerful, complex story. To give you the very broadest of broad strokes outlines - we follow Genly Ai, the envoy from the Ekumen* to the wintry planet Gethen, where he gets caught up in the turbulence of its local politics & has to contend with coming to an understanding of the natives' alternative mode of sex.** That's all I'm saying. Read this novel.

* An alliance, for want of a better term, of 83 human[ish]-populated planets, which it's Ai's job to try to persuade Gethen's authorities to affiliate themselves with.

** Incredibly imaginative worldbuilding here: the Gethenian people are all genderfluid bisexuals, effectively - i.e. they spend 80% of their lives living as sexless androgynes, then in their monthly cycles of libidinous urges they become either male or female for a few days. (Sections of the novel read like extracts from a Judith Butler thought experiment.) This is important to the story (what other novel can boast a line like "the king was pregnant"? tell me) but never has to rely on infodumps, instead being organically seeded & developed throughout. You can tell Le Guin was raised by an anthropologist in how believably she is able to depict such an alien (and yet human) society, so well thought-through it comes across.

the Amber Spyglass

This book is the third (see here for the first and here for the second books) and final instalment of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I didn't mention in earlier posts but although this is my first time reading these* I did watch the recent BBC adaptation of them (which is very good but not as good as the books, as is so often the case), so I already had a broad grasp of the story, characters, and themes; but I wanted to revisit it from the horse's mouth, as it were.

   So - the story. As with previous instalments I shall only sketch out the first third or so to avoid spoiling it. Lyra has been captured by Mrs Coulter, who is keeping her in a drug-induced sleep while she [Mrs Coulter that is] plots her next move to keep her daughter safe from the clutches of the Church: meanwhile, Lyra is being visited in her dreams by her dead friend from the first book, Roger, who seems to be calling out from the land of the dead. Will is universe-hopping with the subtle knife, looking for Lyra, soon crossing paths & teaming up with Iorek Byrnison, who has resumed his duties as king of the armoured bears after his last mission with Lee Scoresby went awry. Mary Malone found a window in her universe to another world populated by intelligent wheeled creatures called mulefa, who teach her a great many new strange things. And thundering on in the background to all this is a mounting war for dominance of the heavens - the Church on the defensive, and Lord Asriel with all the allies he can muster on the offensive. Needless to say, Will & Lyra soon reunite, and aware of the grand currents of destiny swirling around them, they resolve to find a way to go to the land of the dead - to do something, they know not what, but that will have monumental impact on the battles brewing in the world around them.

   I hugely enjoyed this whole trilogy. Lyra & Will are complex, likeable & relatable as protagonists; the moral frameworks of antagonistic forces & the conflicts they're engaged in are delightfully grey & thought-provoking; Pullman is a straightforward, not at all verbose or lofty, writer of immense skill in conveying feelings from urgency to safety & everything inbetween; and finally I would say that the originality of the fantasy elements in these stories is perhaps the strongest of all the kids' fantasy series I've read for this blog. The alethiometer & the subtle knife are unique conceptual inventions, far from being mere MacGuffins these are well-thought-through objects with comprehensible powers that drive the plot forward in innovative ways. And Dust! I won't actually give you any info on Dust here, in case you want to read the trilogy for yourself, as exploring & resolving the mysteries around it as a phenomenon is central to the backbone of the books, but I will say again that it is a marvellously original & fecund idea in fantastical worldbuilding.

   This whole trilogy I would highly recommend for readers between six & fourteen maybe (don't @ me if you decide this is an inappropriate age bracket, when I was a child I read whatever the heck I wanted & it did no lasting damage) for maximal enjoyment but these are such well-crafted stories that I'm sure adult readers will get a lot out of them too. I did.

* To my shame - I would have loved them as a child. But then, I never read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child either, and would have loved them; and I suspect Pullman being a kind of anti-Lewis the dialectic between the two series in my imagination had I read both would have led me to some interesting theological questions as a youth.

the Subtle Knife

This book is the second instalment of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. As I said in my previous post, as I always do for serieses I will be reserving my fuller thoughts on the whole for the final post & here will simply give a rough, spoiler-free sketch of the story's gist.

   Will Parry, a teenage boy from our world, whose chief concern in life is caring for his mentally-ill mother, accidentally kills a man who has broken into the house. Naturally, he leaves his mum with his piano teacher to keep her safe while he runs away - then, almost immediately, he finds a magical window into another world. This other world, called Cittágazze, is a crumbling coastal city, deserted by everyone but children. While exploring, the first other person Will encounters is a girl slightly younger than him who introduces herself as Lyra Silvertongue (aye, the very same heroine from the first book - she was renamed by Iorek Byrnison), who tells him that great things are afoot. Together they start travelling back and forth between Will's universe & Cittágazze as Lyra searches for her father for clues as to where her path leads & Will in turn seeks his own father, an explorer who went missing on a mission in the far north when Will was a baby. Their hunt soon leads them into contact with a pair of notable adults - the seemingly helpful museum-enthusiast Sir Charles Latrom & the bewildered dark-matter research scientist Dr Mary Malone; mysteries begin to resolve somewhat into focus & conspiracies continue to plod inexorably along, and soon the duo find themselves seeking the eponymous subtle knife, an item of immense cosmic power that people from many worlds would kill to possess. I will discuss it along with the alethiometer (and Dust! I haven't mentioned Dust in either post yet, oops) in the post about the final book in the trilogy, coming soon. Oh, forgot to mention, Lee Scoresby is still hanging about looking for a shaman, and Serafina Pekkala (a witch-queen) is here too.

Northern Lights

This book is a children's fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, standing as the first book in his His Dark Materials trilogy, which I've never read before & intend to finish over the next week or so. As is my wont with serieses, I'll reserve my commentary and reflections on characters, overall plot, themes, etc until the post about the last book and here concern myself only with providing a quick spoiler-free sketch of the story so far.

   The novel opens in Jordan College, Oxford, albeit not in our universe but in an alternate reality where all humans are perpetually accompanied by their daemons - animal-form embodiments of their humans' souls. We are introduced to Lyra Belacqua & her daemon Pantalaimon, as her uncle Lord Asriel returns to Jordan from an expedition in the far north. It becomes clear that conspiracy is afoot, and after an unexpected gain (the Master of Jordan gives Lyra one of the only existing alethiometers; a curious arcane instrument which I will discuss in more depth in my final post about the trilogy) followed by an unexpected loss (Lyra's best friend Roger goes missing; she presumes he has been taken by a nefarious mysterious group nicknamed "the Gobblers"), Lyra is sent away from Jordan to live as the assistant to a glamourous & powerful woman named Mrs Coulter. However - just as she's starting to adjust to the high-class lifestyle, Lyra notices that the tendrils of conspiracy don't even leave her safe here - so she runs away, ending up in the company of the gyptians (a community of people largely comparable to gypsies in our universe, only with barges instead of caravans), who she urges to go north to track down the Gobblers & rescue Roger (along with the many other children, some of them gyptians, who have been taken). The icy wastes of the far North then play background to a rollercoaster of captures & escapes, near misses & fatal mistakes - we meet Iorek Byrnison, an armoured bear, and Lee Scoresby, a Texan aeronaut, and Lyra & the gyptians do their best to muddle through the deepening dangers of the conspiracy they're uncovering, including whatever roles in it Lord Asriel & Mrs Coulter seem to be playing.

   I read this in two big sittings. Pullman writes extremely well & I found this a highly compelling page-turner - as an adult! Had I been exposed more fully to these books when I was of their target audience age (say, ten to thirteenish maybe) I'm confident they would have displaced The Franchise That Must Not Be Named as my go-to rereads. Strongly recommended. Stand by for posts about books two & three.