Still working on "His Dark Materials" and just started The Amber Spyglass.
Also (I always read multiple books at a time) I started David Weber's Honor Harrington series. Often called "Hornblower in Space" this series features huge space ships delivering broadsides in furious space battles, and "sailing" through hyper space on gravity waves.
Many people say that the series goes downhill as it goes on, but no one agrees on just where. I just finished the third book, and I think the intensity has dropped off.
Perhaps once a writer does a few books in the same universe, with the same characters, they get a little complacent.
I read the first chapter of the fourth book and was looking at some articles on Wikipedia found out that this is the only book in the series to NOT feature any space battles. Now that's a letdown and I may never finish the book.
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