Lyra Keres is one of the main characters, the main protagonist, and the main narrator of the narrative. Though she had a crush on Boone Runar, her main love interest is the god of death, Hades. At the age of three, her parents trafficked her to the Order of Thieves in order to settle their debts through her labor. On the day her mother’s water broke while pregnant with her in Zeus’s temple, Zeus cursed Lyra to be unlovable. For the whole of her 23 years of life, therefore, Lyra has never known a loving relationship—be it romantic, platonic, or familial. Her time in the Order of Thieves was not particularly successful either, since Lyra wasn’t stealthy enough to become a master thief and instead became the Order’s record keeper. According to Lyra, the only achievement she had was devising the whistling system members of the Order use to communicate with each other at the age of six.

Lyra describes herself as being “a slip of a woman with short raven hair, a smallish face, pointed chin, and catlike eyes. […] They are deep green with a darker outer ring and gold at the center, fringed by long black lashes” (27).