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His Dark Materials is the title of the fantasy trilogy for young readers written by the English author Philip Pullman. The first novel, Northern Lights (also known as The Golden Compass), was published in 1995, followed by The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000).
The His Dark Materials trilogy represents a turning point for the young adult fantasy genre in several ways. Pullman does not use fantasy simply as an escape from reality, but as a philosophical tool. In his parallel worlds, the novels explore free will, religion and authority, consciousness, the soul, and science.
Rather than portraying magic as a supernatural power, Pullman intertwines it with quantum physics, theology, and psychology. The result is a fantasy that encourages existential questions and ethical reflections, rather than just being a straightforward epic adventure.



The old man replied in a firm voice: “I’ve seen this done by the Tartars. It’s a technique found among the Siberian aborigines and the Tungus. From there, of course, it spread to the territories of the Skraeling, although as far as I know it’s now banned in New Denmark. May I examine it more closely?”
After a brief silence, he spoke again.
“My eyes aren’t so clear, and the ice here is dirty, but it seems to me there’s a hole at the top of the skull. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“Trepanning?”
“Exactly.”
-
She approached and gently lifted the nearest skull from where it rested.
“What are you doing?” said Roger. “You mustn’t touch them!”
She turned it over several times, paying him no mind. Suddenly, something fell from the hole at the base of the skull, slipped through her fingers, and clinked against the floor, almost making her drop the skull in surprise.
“It’s a coin!” said Roger, groping for it. “Maybe there’s a treasure!”
-
“Have you ever heard of an explorer named Stanislaus Grumman?”
“Grumman? Of course. I met one of his group when I flew over the Yenisei River two years ago. He was about to go live among the Tartar tribes up there. Indeed, I think they did it to him, that hole in the skull: it was part of an initiation ceremony, but the man who told me about it didn’t know much.”
“So… if he was a kind of honorary Tartar, they wouldn’t have killed him?”
“Killed him? So he’s dead?”
“Yes. I saw his head,” said Lyra, proudly. “My father found it. I saw it when he showed it to the Academics at Jordan College in Oxford. They had skinned it and everything.”
“Who skinned it?”
“Well, the Tartars, or at least that’s what the Academics thought. But maybe it wasn’t true.”
-
The girl continued. “We were staying quiet and still, and then the nurse came in, the one with the gentle voice. And she said: ‘Come out, Tony, I know you’re here, come on, we won’t hurt you…’ And he said: ‘But what’s going to happen?’ and she said: ‘We’re just going to put you to sleep and then do a little operation, and then you’ll wake up and be just fine.’ Only Tony didn’t really believe her, and said…”
“Holes!” someone said. “They’ll make a hole in your head like the Tartars! I bet it!”
“Shut up! And what else did the nurse say?” another interjected. By now, at least a dozen children had gathered around her table, their dæmons eager to know, all tense and wide-eyed.
The blonde girl continued: “Tony wanted to know what they wanted to do to Ratter, right? And the nurse says: ‘Well, we’ll put her to sleep too, just like you.’ And then Tony says: ‘You want to kill her, right? Eh? I know it. We all know this is what happens to us.’ And the nurse says: ‘No, of course not. It’s just a little operation. Just a small cut. It really doesn’t hurt at all, but we’re putting you to sleep just to be safe.’”
Calm had settled over the whole room. The nurses in charge of surveillance had stepped out for a moment, and the door to the kitchen was closed, so no one could hear them from there.
“What kind of cut?” a boy asked, his voice calm but full of fear. “Did she say what kind of cut it is?”
“She only said: ‘It’s something to make you grow.’ She said it’s something everyone has to do, that’s why the dæmons of adults don’t change shape like ours. That is, they make a cut to give them a certain shape permanently, and that’s how you become grown-up.”
“But…”
“So, this means that…”
“But… all the grown-ups had this cut done to them?”
“Then…”