Name: Leila Jade's review of The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) by Philip Pullman
Item: The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)
Rating: 3
Author: Leila Jade

Philip Pullman

Twenty-year-old college undergraduate Lyra is once again thrown together with Malcom Polstead, now a professor, after Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon, receive secrets from a dying man about a daemon-haunted city and the origins of Dust.

The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

Maria🥂

The Secret Commonwealth

maddie

Leila Jade

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage- The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey. It is almost ten years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence. Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . . The second volume of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right. Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust. The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself, to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers.

The Book of Dust Volume Two

Madison Keiran

Amazing depiction of the devastating turmoil that happens between a girl and her soul once she grows up and loses the naïveté of childhood. The anger, the pain, the misunderstanding. The search for the truth about the essence of life and what makes us human. This book will stay with me for the rest of my life, just like His Dark Materials.

Cody Degen

Seren Johnston

Slow start, but snowballs as Pullman once again pulls you into Lyra's world. Darker, more adult, and more disturbing —particularly in the latter part of the book — than I was expecting. 

Ben Brears 

Sonja H

Die letzten Seiten nur überflogen. Für mich endet die Serie mit diesem Buch. I didn‘t get it...

Celeste Richardson

Pullman has created something so special with Lyra’s world and the mythos of other worlds he set up in the original His Dark Materials trilogy. La Belle Sauvage, the first installment of this spin-off trilogy, took us back to Lyra’s beginning, giving up the wild story of her infancy and the two children who rescued her. This second installment fast forwards to years after the events of the original trilogy, when Lyra is grown, having just tipped over the cusp of adulthood. The final events of that first trilogy haunt her still, but she is convincing herself more and more that those events aren’t quite true. As she falls into the trap of rationality Pantalaimon, her dæmon, rebels against her loss of imagination. From there, the plot goes wild.

Seeing Lyra as an adult was both thrilling and heartbreaking. She’s been through so much by this point, but she’s begun to lose the ferocity and uniqueness that made her so compelling in His Dark Materials. Adult Lyra seems like a pale imitation of childhood Lyra, and Pan is incredibly upset about the change. Seeing the two of them at odds and at each other’s throats is incredibly uncomfortable. Dæmons are like the outward expression of a person’s soul, and so we can see that Lyra’s quarreling with Pan is at its core a level of self-hatred that is hard to stomach. The journeys taken in this book are made all the more poignant for it.

Something that I really love about this book is the multitude of plot lines happening simultaneously but coming across as spokes in the same story instead of separate stories that the reader hopes will come together. The jump from one plot to the next never felt jarring, but like a natural progression in the overarching story. Besides Lyra’s and Pan’s perspectives, we also get to see a lot of the story from Malcolm’s point of view, and a small bit from Alice’s, as well. Unlike La Belle Sauvage, which could technically be read without having first read His Dark Materials, The Secret Commonwealth would be incredibly confusing for readers who have not read both the first trilogy and La Belle Sauvage. The preceding four books are absolutely essential to both the understanding and enjoyment of this book.

My absolute favorite element of The Secret Commonwealth is the expansion of knowledge we’re given regarding dæmons. Strangely, this new information makes the dæmons more mysterious instead of less. There isn’t really any of this new knowledge that I can share in a review without somehow spoiling the plot, but it was all totally fascinating. The story also spanned much of Lyra’s world that we hadn’t seen up to this point, and it was interesting to see how it was eerily similar and radically different from our own world. We see how prejudice and fear of anyone who is different plague Lyra’s world as much as our own, and how religion so often inflames these prejudices instead of abating them.

I was completely enthralled by The Secret Commonwealth, but the ending felt so abrupt that it actually shocked me and left me a little angry. I felt cheated out of witnessing something that the entire novel had been building toward. While I am sure it happened, it did so off screen so to speak. Honestly, I frantically flipped back, hoping I had accidentally skipped a few pages. No such luck. Had I known how jarring I would find the ending I would’ve waited to read it until closer to the still unknown publication date of the final installment before reading The Secret Commonwealth. 

Pullman wrote something wonderful in The Secret Commonwealth, despite the abrupt ending. Waiting for the final installment is going to be painful, but I have no doubt that it’ll be worth the wait. Pullman has yet to disappoint me, and I can’t wait to see how the phase of Lyra’s story ends.

You can find  this review and more at Novel Notions.

Melanie Richards

How am I supposed to wait another 2 years for book 3?!

Jordan Card

Im so annoyed that im definitely going to read all of these miserable books

Ben Burns

Long-awaited and great, but it doesn't stand on its own! Wish the third book was out already, because (spoilers, sort of) literally zero of the 5 or so major plot threads - which I am thoroughly invested in - have been resolved. But still, it's wonderful to be back in Lyra's world. I've never read anything quite so amazing as the original His Dark Materials trilogy, and while this new trilogy is a little less epic, less mindblowing, less tear-jerking, and occasionally hard to follow, the magic is still there. Plus, I must have gasped aloud a dozen times.

Vida Koster

A few thoughts - This book reads like a book for kids that an author tried to make into an adult book by adding random mature themes. For example, it contains weird, unnecessary and frankly creepy references to sex which add nothing to the story. For example, in one scene a character "puts his index finger in the closed fist of his other hand" to mimic sex, because he is looking for the "sexual approval of an older man" he is talking to. What does that mean and why would you add it to a scene? In another a female character "embodies an intense sexuality", but she is just talking to someone and it is not at all relevant whether she is sexual or not. Plus how do you embody intense sexuality? 
The dialogue is often almost mechanical, it doesn't flow naturally at all. The premise is also flimsy, but what I do like is that it clearly mirrors current political events - power grabs by influential private and political parties leading to violence and displacement of the vulnerable. Overall an ok read but not something I would recommend. 
2.5

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey. It is almost ten years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence. Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . . The second volume of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right. Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust. The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself, to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers. *The first book in The Book of Dust trilogy, La Belle Sauvage, is coming to the stage in the summer of this year. Performed at The Bridge Theatre from July 2020, it will be a theatrical spectacle not to be missed* _____ Reviews for The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two: "[Pullman] has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in rigour and stylistic elegance. This is a book for getting older with" Guardian, Book of the Week "The Secret Commonwealth is ablaze with light and life. The writing is exquisite; every sentence sings ... To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in Technicolour" i "Pullman's story is still thought-provoking ... This book elegantly weaves in live issues, from Europe's refugee crisis to facts in the post-truth era. And Pullman's prose is rewarding as ever" The Times "A long, taxing, complex journey, laced with beauty, terror and philosophy" Metro "As ever, Pullman's story is complex and vast but home to some of the finest storytelling in the 21st century. Revel in whole new worlds and enjoy one of literature's most wonderful heroines before she comes to HBO and the BBC" Stylist.co.uk "Pullman is confronting readers with the horrors of our own world reflected back at us. In The Secret Commonwealth he creates a fearful symmetry" The Herald

Joanna Rosenwink 

I received an advance copy of The Secret Commonwealth from Penguin Random House - as a massive fan of Philip Pullman this was one of the greatest moments of my bookselling career so far.

When you love a series of books so much it can be a little daunting to read a new prequel or sequel in case it doesn’t live up to your expectations and ends up tainting the rest of the series for you. So although I couldn’t wait to read it, I was also a little apprehensive. I needn’t have worried. 

We rejoin Lyra 10 years after the original books ended and meet many new characters as well as reconnecting with ones we’ve met before. It was such a pleasure to dive back into Lyra’s Oxford, and experience Philip Pullman’s incredible storytelling once again. 

Every few pages I had I “oh my goodness!” moment where a twist was revealed or a connection made, I just wished I knew someone else who was reading it so I could talk about it! 

This book was so exciting is was hard to put it down, but I’m so sad now that I’ve finished it and have to wait years for the next one - I need to know what happens next!!

Sarah Erle

Gemma Copeland

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey. It is almost ten years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence. Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . . The second volume of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right. Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust. The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself, to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers. *The first book in The Book of Dust trilogy, La Belle Sauvage, is coming to the stage in the summer of this year. Performed at The Bridge Theatre from July 2020, it will be a theatrical spectacle not to be missed* _____ Reviews for The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two: "[Pullman] has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in rigour and stylistic elegance. This is a book for getting older with" Guardian, Book of the Week "The Secret Commonwealth is ablaze with light and life. The writing is exquisite; every sentence sings ... To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in Technicolour" i "Pullman's story is still thought-provoking ... This book elegantly weaves in live issues, from Europe's refugee crisis to facts in the post-truth era. And Pullman's prose is rewarding as ever" The Times "A long, taxing, complex journey, laced with beauty, terror and philosophy" Metro "As ever, Pullman's story is complex and vast but home to some of the finest storytelling in the 21st century. Revel in whole new worlds and enjoy one of literature's most wonderful heroines before she comes to HBO and the BBC" Stylist "Pullman is confronting readers with the horrors of our own world reflected back at us. In The Secret Commonwealth he creates a fearful symmetry" The Herald

The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two

Chuspa Voj

Sophie

Caroline Boone

Andrew Ireland

sophiebastow 

Hannah Pollock

**Don't miss the second series of His Dark Materials on BBC One this November.** From the author of the phenomenal His Dark Materials comes the next chapter in the story of Lyra Silvertongue . . . Lyra is now studying at St Sophia's College, Oxford, with her daemon Pantalaimon. But, for the first time there are serious divisions between the two. Lyra is questioning everything she once held dear. Pan misses the impulsiveness of their youth. When an act of terrible violence breaks the peace of the Oxford night, Lyra and Pan's relationship reaches a crisis and they are drawn, far from home, into the dangerous factions of a world they had no idea existed. The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself and to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers. *Exclusive to the paperback edition, Chris Wormell's new original illustrations bring Lyra's world vividly to life.* _____ Reviews for The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two: "[Pullman] has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in rigour and stylistic elegance. This is a book for getting older with" Guardian, Book of the Week "The Secret Commonwealth is ablaze with light and life. The writing is exquisite; every sentence sings ... To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in Technicolour" i "Pullman's story is still thought-provoking ... This book elegantly weaves in live issues, from Europe's refugee crisis to facts in the post-truth era. And Pullman's prose is rewarding as ever" The Times "A long, taxing, complex journey, laced with beauty, terror and philosophy" Metro "As ever, Pullman's story is complex and vast but home to some of the finest storytelling in the 21st century. Revel in whole new worlds and enjoy one of literature's most wonderful heroines before she comes to HBO and the BBC" Stylist "Pullman is confronting readers with the horrors of our own world reflected back at us. In The Secret Commonwealthhe creates a fearful symmetry" The Herald

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Leila Jade &
The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2) by Philip Pullman