Two years after the conclusion of The Amber Spyglass, Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon sit high on the roof of Jordan College, gazing down on the streets of Oxford. But their peace is shattered by a flock of enraged starlings, who seem intent on knocking another bird out of the sky - a bird that Lyra and Pan quickly realise is a witch's daemon. The daemon carries worrying tidings of a terrible sickness spreading in the north, and claims that only Lyra can help him - but is he really friend, or foe?
Illustrated throughout with exquisite wood-cut engravings by John Lawrence, this beautifully packaged story also contains an extract of Pullman's second short story set in the His Dark Materials world, Once Upon a Time in the North, a map and other missives that seem to have slipped from Lyra's world into our own.
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[Lyra didn't often climb out of her bedroom window these days]***
(@DoubledayUK, 4 June 2017, first published 2003, hardback, 80 pages, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I enjoyed this but felt it was a bit thin, definitely not as meaty as Once Upon a Time in the North. The page count on Google and Amazon is 80. This is not correct. The story is less than 50 pages long and there are about 30 pages of sketches and illustrations shoe-horned in at the end. I enjoyed the premise, Lyra and Pan lured into danger by a seemingly sincere cry for help because Lyra is blamed for being the cause of a war. Still, I wanted more and felt a bit let down. Lyra's Oxford is a good story but way overpriced for something so small. I wanted more from this tale.
