As Phillip Pullman's fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, examines the "grand old metaphysical questions", the great Miltonian questions of free will, love and obedience. among other things – it is also about the act and art of reading. Or, as Shelley King describes it, it focuses on "the process of textual interpretation and the role it plays in formulating metaphysical questions within a culture" (106). The fantasy worlds of His Dark Materials are as shaped by history and interpretations of the texts as our own. The first book, The Golden Compass, is an expansion of Paradise Lost, leaving the reader in as much moral confusion at the end as Milton. As the series continues, it further amplifies a “latent” Miltonic orthodoxy; creating a Satanist reading that intends (and succeeds) to overthrow God. All texts follow a pattern of literary history, drawing on and commenting on those that preceded them; put simply, new texts concentrate and amplify the resonance of old texts. To do this, Phillip Pullman creates a close relationship between his trilogy and Milton's Paradise Lost. Through an intimate relationship with its source text, Pullman explores methods of reading the text, writing a variable text, and the nature of repeated stories, to present His Dark Materials as a response and cognate to Paradise Lost. Pullman's series is an unfaithful account of Paradise Lost, itself an unfaithful version of the Bible, and this is what makes this tale a successful effort. Published between 1995 and 2000, Pullman's trilogy includes The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. Set across a multiverse, the reader is first introduced to Lyra, a young girl living in an alternate universe, Europe, which is...... middle of paper ......Eds. Laura Lunger and Gregory M. Colon Semenza. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. Print. King, Shelley. “Without Lyra, we would understand neither the New nor the Old Testament: exegesis, allergory and reading of the Golden Compass. » His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Phillip Pullman's Triology. Ed. Millicent Lenz and Carole Scott. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. Print. Milton, John. Paradise lost. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: WW Norton and Company, 1993. Print. Pullman, Phillip. The Golden Compass. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.---. The subtle knife. New York: Dell-Laurel Leaf, 1997. Print.---. The amber spyglass. New York: Knopf, 2000. Print. Shohet, Lauren. “His Dark Materials, Paradise Lost, and the Common Drive.” Milton in popular culture. Ed. Laura Lunger and Gregory M. Colon Semenza. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. Print.