Via NPR:

The Book of Dust will return to the world(s) and characters of His Dark Materials, [Philip] Pullman said, and Lyra will be integral to the new story — but not in the way she was before. The first volume will take place a decade before the events of His Dark Materials, when Lyra is an infant. The second and third volumes will be set ten years after the original trilogy’s conclusion, and will follow Lyra as a young woman.

Pullman began work on The Book of Dust in 2005. I read HDM in 2007 and, when finished, voraciously searched for any information about a follow-up. By that point, Pullman thought it could be ready by 2009. As the years passed, I all but lost hope and assumed it wasn’t happening. It’s unfortunate that this hopeless waiting hasn’t lessened the despair for other authors taking forever *cough* George RR Martin *cough*.

I first learned about HDM after the first book in the series, The Golden Compass, was made into a movie. I knew nothing about it until I came across an interview with the author. Pullman’s disdain for The Chronicles of Narnia (which I still love because I loved it as a child, though to say it hasn’t aged well is quite an understatement), and the descriptions of HDM as the anti-Narnia piqued my interest.

If you’ve only seen the movie and rightfully thought it terrible, please know the book is so much better. Had I seen it first I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the books. The fact that they watered down the blatant anti-Christian overtones was the least of its problems if I recall correctly.

Anyways, this is great and I think this might be the first time I’ve posted something I’d consider good news. So yay!