Lost in a new world, Lyra finds Will--a boy on the run, a murderer--a worthy and welcome ally. For this is a world where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and witches share the skies with troops of angels. Each is searching--Lyra for the meaning of dark matter, Will for his missing father--but what they find instead is a deadly secret, a knife of untold power. And neither Lyra nor Will suspects how tightly their lives, their loves, their destinies...

The harrowing tale of survival and suspicion takes its most dramatic turn yet when Molly, Yoshi, and the rest discover that there are more than just monsters in the rift.

In a future Earth decimated by global warming where rival countries fight to claim massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean, an innovative corporation creates a technology that can both cool the planet and provide a massive super-weapon, prompting airship pilot Anika Duncan to be swept up by an international plot.