Philip Pullman’s original His Dark Materials trilogy consists of three books. The novels are Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, published between 1995 and 2000.
The trilogy follows Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry as their stories cross multiple worlds. Its fantasy includes dæmons, parallel universes, powerful artifacts, and the mysterious Dust. Although the books are often marketed to younger readers, their themes include authority, religion, free will, moral responsibility, and the transition from childhood to adulthood.
The first novel is called The Golden Compass in the United States, while Northern Lights is the original title used in the United Kingdom and several other markets. This naming difference can make the trilogy’s sequence seem more confusing than it is.
Pullman later returned to Lyra’s world in The Book of Dust, a separate trilogy. The Book of Dust is not part of the original three-book His Dark Materials sequence, even though it expands the same fictional universe.