Will is twelve years old and he's just killed a man. Now he's on his own, on the run, determined to discover the truth about his father's disappearance.

Then Will steps through a window in the air into another world, and finds himself with a companion - a strange, savage little girl called Lyra. Like Will she has a  mission which she intends to carry out at all costs.

But the world of Cittàgazze is a strange and unsettling place. Deadly, soul-eating Specters stalk its streets, while high above, the wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky. And in the mysterious Torre degli Angeli lurks Cittàgazze's most important secret - an object which people from many worlds would kill possess...

This is the second of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, and I've been wanting to read the trilogy for a while. Ever since it was recommended to my by Elinor and Oliver. It's recently come up on the BBC Big Read list, so I'll probably get to it faster than I would have.