If you love the magical world of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman you shouldn’t ignore the four companion novellas. These stories offer a peek into different details of the world and characters we love from the trilogy. I’m a sucker for completing a set and these are four adorable, small hardbacks. As well as expanding on the HDM world they are superb storytelling, charmingly illustrated/engraved, offer the extra details we get from letters, maps and diagrams, and as one reviewer commented, “everything Pullman has to write is worth reading”. There are definite nods to Edgar Allen Poe in one of the stories, another reads like an arctic western and for me engaging again with the characters I love, Lee Scoresby and his daemon Hestor, and the armoured bear Iorek Byrninson, is such a pleasure. These are delightful ways back into HDM with the same perfectly formed mystery and magic.

Roger, Little Unity