Twenty years have passed since Lord Asriel knocked on the gates of Jordan College and handed over the baby - his daughter Lyra - to the protection of the university walls. Almost ten years have passed since readers left Lyra and Will, having read the last pages of The Amber Telescope, the novel that concluded the His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra is twenty years old, no longer a child, but the world she knew and loved , is changing. She needs answers to questions that it would be easier not to ask. And to get them, she sets off on a journey that will change her life again - across Europe, to the mysterious, cruel, unpredictable East.