The prequel companion volume to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

This is a glimpse for Pullman fans into the first friendship of two of the most beloved characters in the His Dark Materials trilogy—Lee Scoresby and armored bear Iorek Byrnison. Lee Scoresby, Texan aeronaut and future friend to Lyra Belacqua, recently won his hot-air balloon in a poker game. He finds himself floating North to the Arctic island of Novy Odense, where he becomes entangled in a deadly plot. It’s only after Lee forms an alliance with one of the island’s reviled armored bears that he can fight to break up a conspiracy.