This paper discusses the third volume of Pullman's remarkable trilogy. The two main child characters, Lyra and Will, are now entering adolescence, and the novel explores their intense and ambivalent feelings towards the parents and the variously protective or hostile parental figures who surround them. The novel devises remarkable imaginary worlds — for example the land of the mulefa, and the underworld visited by Will and Lyra — through which to explore issues of considerable intellectual and emotional depth. The ‘realism ‘to which Pullman is committed is apparent in the conclusion of the book, where the two child characters, who have fallen in love with one another, have to accept the necessity of separation.