With its uniform editions of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart quartet, this box set features as covers pictures from the faithful BBC TV adaptations of the first two titles as part of the film tie-in. Pullman has captured exactly a mix of late Victorian fiction styles with elements of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle, Jules Verne and penny dreadfuls, spiced up with a little bit of Bram Stoker. The first three novels are fantastic reads, taking place as they do in a largely believable Victorian world, but the last novel, while no less exciting, is slightly let down by its Ruritanian setting in a fictional mid-European country. ( )