Beyond ideas, themes, or controversies, the test of a great novel is in the quality of its life: the richness of the imagined world created or re-created for the reader, and the vitality of the characters who inhabit that world. Generally, it is on the richness of the imagined world, or rather, worlds, created within The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass that most attention has been focused. The sensual reality of Lyra’s world in The Golden Compass, with its gorgeous mixture of Dickensian, Gothic fairytale, and steampunk atmospheres, is particularly attractive. The sheer verve of the author’s inventiveness, his vivid, muscular language and exquisite sense of timing, sweep the reader along on an irresistible tide of storytelling delight and terror. What is there not to love about dæmons and armored bears and truth-telling compasses? What is there not to fear about a mysterious order of child-stealers known as the Gobblers, or a hideous silver guillotine that separates not heads but souls from bodies? But to just discuss the richness of that imagined world without reference to the characters that inhabit it is like employing that silver guillotine to excise soul from body.

Characters are the soul of story. Without character, there is no story; there is only description. It is the interaction of characters—good, bad, and indifferent—that creates and drives the plots of stories, providing their twists and turns. Many writers will testify to the fact that very often it is a character, rather than an  …