Philip Pullman - The Shadow in the North

If kids are reading this stuff, I feel better already. Like the first in the series, this is pretty grim in spots, but not ostentatiously so (over the top 'darkness' and 'grittiness' in childrens'/young adult lit can be really irritating); it's also quite convoluted though it's never difficult to follow if you concentrate. I spent seriously a whole day with the name of a generic category stuck somewhere near, but not quite in, my conscious recollection - I kept getting 'Victorian spectacular', but I knew that that wasn't quite right...the next day, it came to me - 'sensation', not 'spectacular' (though these novels aren't as, well, sensational as that term suggests). Anyway, it's tops.