Book 1 of His Dark Materials trilogy. Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North. Talking armored bears and winged creatures live side by side with humans, and a mysterious entity called Dust just might have the opwer to unite the universes--if it isn't destroyed first. A complex, beautiful, multilayered, epic story.

See also Book 2: The Subtle Knife, Book 3: The Amber Spyglass