“Questions about our existence are infinitely interesting to me. Little by little through that story the idea of what Dust was became clearer and clearer, but I always wanted to return to it and discover more. The idea of Dust suffused His Dark Materials. Questions about that mysterious and troubling substance were already causing strife 10 years before His Dark Materials, and at the centre of The Book of Dust is the struggle between a despotic and totalitarian organisation, which wants to stifle speculation and enquiry, and those who believe thought and speech should be free. Pullman continues: “…why return to Lyra’s world? Dust. Also, of course, there are some characters who are new to us, including an ordinary boy (a boy we have seen in an earlier part of Lyra’s story, if we were paying attention) who, with Lyra, is caught up in a terrifying adventure that takes him into a new world. It’s a different story, but there are settings that readers of His Dark Materials will recognise, and characters they’ve met before. It doesn’t stand before or after His Dark Materials, but beside it. “…is it a prequel? Is it a sequel? It’s neither,” writes Pullam. The new series will include characters readers will be familiar with as well as creations such as alethimeters, daemons, and the Magisterium. Writing via his website, Pullman explains that the first two volumes feature heroine Lyra Belacqua in two periods of her life – as a child and 10 years following the climax of His Dark Materials.
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