The Golden Compass

Lyra Belacqua lives a half-feral childhood in the shelter of Jordan College, an Oxford of a world much like ours yet subtly turned, where each person is bonded to a daemon, an animal companion that carries a piece of their soul. When her friend Roger and other children begin disappearing, taken by the shadowy Gobblers, Lyra sets out for the frozen North with a rare truth-telling instrument in her keeping. Her journey draws in gyptian boatmen, a clan of witches, a Texan aeronaut, and Iorek Byrnison, an exiled armored bear. What she uncovers reaches from the fate of stolen children up to a war over the nature of the soul itself.