His Dark Materials or The Book of Dust: Which Should You Read First?

Philip Pullman's world of daemons and Dust now spans two trilogies, and they don't sit neatly one after the other. The Book of Dust opens with La Belle Sauvage, set when Lyra is a baby, more than a decade before The Golden Compass. Its second and third books, The Secret Commonwealth and The Rose Field, follow Lyra as a twenty-year-old, several years after His Dark Materials ends.

That makes chronological order awkward: you'd read La Belle Sauvage, then all of His Dark Materials, then the rest of The Book of Dust. It works, but we think it's the wrong way to meet Lyra.

Our reading order starts with His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) and then reads The Book of Dust in publication order. The original trilogy is the story Pullman built everything else around, and The Book of Dust is written for readers who already know where Lyra's journey goes.

Age is the other consideration. His Dark Materials is often read by younger teens, while The Secret Commonwealth in particular is more adult in tone. Starting with the original trilogy lets a younger reader stop there and come back later.

Where did you start? And now that The Rose Field is out, did the ending of The Book of Dust live up to The Amber Spyglass for you?