The series is called His Dark Materials, and many observers have it pegged as the next global phenomenon of children’s fantasy literature. But there is a more adult side to Philip Pullman’s tales of fantastic adventure, and it’s bound to make many adults uncomfortable: “The books make a breathtakingly subversive attack on organized religion and on the notion of an all-powerful god. The trilogy has already been criticized by church organizations alarmed at its preference for humanism and for its depiction of a cruel fictional church that is obsessed with what it regards as the sexual purity of children but blinded by its own lust for power.”