I recognize that my expectations are impossibly high and that, in literature as well as in romance, you cannot return to the exact feeling you had before. I’d like to think that Pullman is biding his time, laying down the groundwork for what is yet to come.

And even with its longueurs, the book is full of wonder. [...] It’s a stunning achievement, the universe Pullman has created and continues to build on. All that remains is to sit tight and wait for the next installment.

The Greeks permeate his writing. Like Odysseus, his new hero, Malcolm, is on a self-appointed quest, fighting off enemies from his boat. (He’s also very unlike Odysseus, being 11 years old, ginger-haired and partial, like Pullman, to woodworking and meat pies.) “The Book of Dust” has other touchstones too: William Blake, the occult, ancient civilizations, East Asia and a eight-minute piece by Borodin called “In the Steppes of Central Asia.” Most of all, Edmund Spenser’s epic, 16th-century allegory, “The Faerie Queene.” Pullman copies the structure of “The Faerie Queene” — strange encounter after strange encounter — but thankfully not its style. When I admitted how I had struggled with the countless pages of archaic verse, Pullman shouted, gleeful, from his seat: “So did I! Couldn’t read it. Couldn’t read it at all until I was doing this.” His own novel is more readable, and earthier, locked into reality by character and geography, Malcolm and Oxford.