Books like His Dark Materials
What should you read after Philip Pullman’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Philip Pullman
- 1995
- Fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after His Dark Materials
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchNorthern Lights (The Golden Compass)
Philip Pullman
The first volume on its own, for anyone who met the trilogy as a whole and wants to go back to where Lyra is still just a feral child conning scholars in an Oxford basement.
- Daemons — your soul walking beside you
- A child who lies brilliantly
- Armoured bears and witches
- One third of the story
Best for worlds behind doorsThe Chronicles of Narnia
C. S. Lewis
The books Pullman spent three volumes arguing with. Children step through into another world and meet a theology — the difference is that Lewis wants you to kneel to it.
- Windows cut between worlds
- Theology argued at full volume
- Growing up treated as a loss
- Christian allegory, sincerely meant
Great matchA Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle
A stubborn girl crosses between worlds to find a missing parent, with physics and faith tangled together. Pullman's ambition, an earlier generation, half the page count.
- Windows cut between worlds
- Theology argued at full volume
- A child who lies brilliantly
- Deeply religious in the other direction
Worth a look — with a warningThe Magicians
Lev Grossman
For the reader who finished the trilogy grieving and wants that treated seriously: Grossman writes about children who reach the other world and find it doesn't fix them.
- Windows cut between worlds
- Growing up treated as a loss
- An ending that refuses to console
- Adult content — drugs, sex, cruelty
Worth a look — with a warningEragon
Christopher Paolini
The bonded-companion idea — a creature who is part of your mind and cannot be left behind — is the one real overlap here, and it is done with far less thought than Pullman gives it.
- Daemons — your soul walking beside you
- Armoured bears and witches
- Openly derivative of Tolkien and Star Wars
Worth a look — with a warningThe Mortal Instruments
Cassandra Clare
Shares the hidden-order-inside-our-city furniture and the angelic mythology, but the engine here is romance and banter rather than any argument about authority or innocence.
- Windows cut between worlds
- Theology argued at full volume
- Romance is the main event
Best for innocence taken awayThe Giver
Lois Lowry
A boy learns what his elders have decided he must not feel, and cannot go back to being comfortable. Pullman's argument about knowledge and the fall, in one quiet volume.
- Growing up treated as a loss
- A church you are meant to fear
- An ending that refuses to console
- No fantasy machinery at all
Great matchInkheart
Cornelia Funke
Books as doorways, quite literally: read aloud and something comes out. The same reverence Pullman has for texts and libraries, aimed at younger readers.
- Windows cut between worlds
- A child who lies brilliantly
- Middle-grade in pace and tone
Best for the shadow-selfThe Wizard of Earthsea
Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin gives her hero a shadow he has to name and accept, which is roughly what a daemon is once you stop admiring the fur. Moral seriousness in under two hundred pages.
- Daemons — your soul walking beside you
- Growing up treated as a loss
- An ending that refuses to console
- Slow, quiet, almost mythic
Best for more of exactly thisThe Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage
Philip Pullman
Same world, same church, same Dust, with Lyra as an infant in a basket and the Thames rising. If you wanted more Pullman rather than something like Pullman, start here.
- Daemons — your soul walking beside you
- A church you are meant to fear
- Theology argued at full volume
- Slow opening half
What should you read after His Dark Materials?
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman — the first volume on its own, for anyone who met the trilogy as a whole and wants to go back to where Lyra is still just a feral child conning scholars in an Oxford basement.
If what stayed with you was windows cut between worlds, read The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis instead: the books Pullman spent three volumes arguing with. Children step through into another world and meet a theology — the difference is that Lewis wants you to kneel to it. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle is the other strong option — a stubborn girl crosses between worlds to find a missing parent, with physics and faith tangled together. Pullman's ambition, an earlier generation, half the page count.
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