His Dark Materials is getting a new addition this year

After 17 years, Philip Pullman is going back to his most famous story with a new trilogy in the world of His Dark Materials.

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials tends to get a bit overlooked these days. It was designed to stand out as a darker, more mature kind of fantasy story. But that thunder has now been stolen entirely by George R.R. Martin. And it really didn’t help that it got a movie adaptation so bad it killed New Line’s future as an independent studio.

I for one still hold it up as one of the great fantasy series of our time. It hits a perfect sweet spot of being understandable for kids yet still challenging for adults. Plus, the sheer scope of Pullman’s imagination still has me in awe. And it really scratches an itch that many people likely have these days. After all, it was explicitly designed as an atheistic counter-argument to the Christian allegory of The Chronicles of Narnia

But it’s about to get another chance, as  Pullman has announced he’s begun work on an entire sequel trilogy. Titled The Book of Dust, it’s said to start out at the same time as the original story and then stretch on to two decades later. He also promises appearances by Materials heroine Lyra Belaqua throughout the timeline. Other familiar characters are also a possibility, though he hasn’t named any.

Where this gets tricky is that the story is set throughout several parallel universes. Lyra herself comes from a distinct alternate world and then travels through several others, including our own. So it’s anyone’s guess how that factors into the new series’ story. Of course, a big part of the original trilogy’s appeal was its sheer unpredictability. You constantly have no idea where the story will go, yet everything still fits together perfectly. Hopefully, the new series can tap into that feeling just as much.

The one real concern here is, after a story that’s literally about a quest to kill God, how do you do something that measures up? But Pullman has definitely earned enough goodwill that I’m cautiously optimistic. At the least, the whole fact that it’s been almost two decades since the final Materials book is pretty solid evidence that this isn’t just a cash grab on the brand but a story he truly thinks is worth telling.

Next: New Game of Thrones book coming, not Winds of Winter

Book 1 of The Book of Dust, whose title has yet to be revealed, will be released on Oct. 19.