His Dark Materials Trilogy, Philip Pullman

I've surfaced. May I recommend that if you buy these, you buy them all at the same time – they're sold as a group on Amazon: HIS DARK MATERIALS TRILOGY: THE GOLDEN COMPASS / THE SUBTLE KNIFE / THE AMER SPYGLASS by Philip Pullman. The story does not "end" sufficiently at the end of the first two books, you will immediately want to pick up the next book to continue.



At first I wasn't crazy about his writing style - I felt very distant from the characters and the action. But the story drew me in. It is EPIC along The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars scale. In fact, I hear there are attempts in Hollywood to make it into a movie. That would be no small task. About halfway through the second book, his true purpose behind the adventures start to reveal themselves. I don't want to tell too much, as I highly recommend you read them for yourself, but it involves the very essence of everything we are, including God and religion. This is a wonderful quote from the text that may give you a hint of what's in store:

"Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit." – Philip Pullman, THE SUBTLE KNIFE.