Quick recap
Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead helps at his parents' inn near Oxford and keeps an eye on the priory across the river, where nuns are caring for a baby named Lyra. The Magisterium tightens its grip on the country, his school fills with a league of student informers, and a man with a hyena daemon starts circling the child. When a massive flood swallows the region, Malcolm and Alice, the girl who washes dishes at the inn, flee downriver with the baby in his canoe, La Belle Sauvage. Hunted the whole way, they pass through strange places until Lord Asriel turns up and takes the baby to Jordan College.
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