The fantasy genre, as a general rule, puts me to sleep. This is because so many authors derive their worlds and their styles from Tolkein, whose own writing is, in a single word, boring. It was an uphill battle to read Lord of the Rings -- even though the story was supremely engaging, one more five-page analysis of someone's facial expression would have killed me.

For some reason, fantasy written for teenagers is intensely more engaging than anything ol' J.R.R. ever churned out. Yes, including Harry Potter, but that's not the focus of this rant. I've found a series that's far better.

Even if it's never discovered by the mass public, the His Dark Materials trilogy -- The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, written by the decidedly non-famous, unassuming and rather goofy-looking Philip Pullman -- outshines everything that's come out of Jo Rowling's pen to date. His imagery is more vibrant, his characters more human, and his situations infinitely more heartbreaking. Yes, it's a sad story, and one that's pretty much irreconcilable. Eat your heart out, Sirius Black.

The story follows Lyra, a ward of the state living under the care of the servants at Oxford's Jordan College. But it's not the Oxford we know -- the first clue that this is a parallel world (not counting the disclaimer at the beginning of the book) is Lyra's dæmon familiar, Pantalaimon, who follows her everywhere and is capable of changing into any animal. In fact, the world Lyra and Pan occupy is a version of what might have happened in our own had the Catholic Church kept its power from the Dark Ages. Science is called "experimental theology" and any heretical learnings and findings are suppressed.

And one man wants to put a stop to it. We meet him early on -- Lord Asriel, Lyra's uncle and an important benefactor of Jordan College. His presentation to the scholars of Jordan College (with Lyra watching from a closet) raises a few questions: What's going on in the north? Who is Iofur Raknison? And most importantly, what exactly is Dust?

The answer to this last one is simple: It's the obsession of just about every adult throughout the trilogy. Dust is attracted to adults, but not to children. It's more prevalently found in the north, where the Aurora Borealis can be seen.

And Dust is heresy. The Church takes it as physical evidence of original sin, and is trying to put a stop to it by any means necessary. Of course, the means they've discovered are absolutely barbaric, performed upon kidnapped children, and as such must be confined to an isolated research center far in the north, where nobody will discover their operations. Their practices are of course subject to rumors -- nobody actually knows what they do, but suffice to say they've been given the moniker "Gobblers."

When her best friend is abducted by the Gobblers, Lyra takes it upon herself to stop this evil. Over the course of her travels, she learns that things aren't exactly as she's been taught. And we learn (though she can't) that she's the subject of a curious prophecy: Lyra is foretold to bring an end to death itself.

The next two and a half books introduce us to witches, armored bears, balloonists, angels, demons, particle physics professors, Lilliputians with poisonous heel spurs, antelope-elephants on wheels, harpies, God Almighty Himself, and Will Parry, a young boy from our own England who becomes the master of a knife so sharp it can cut between parallel worlds. We learn about consciousness, original sin, the nature of Dust, what happens after you die, creation and evolution, the Holy Trinity, and true love. And the best part is we're left to figure certain things out for ourselves. Pullman sees no need to lay everything out for us, leaving us a choice as to what everything means exactly.

In the end, your heart will be rent to shreds, your brain will be tied into knots, and your soul will be heavy with feelings. And you won't regret having read this trilogy for an instant. If you can handle it, you owe it to yourself to pick these books up.