The Book of Dust, Volume 2: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

Summary from Goodreads:

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 seven 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 Sir 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.

Review:

It’s kind of hard for me to wrap my brain around this book. It was both amazing and slightly disappointing at the same time. After finishing it, I was unable to open another book for about a week. I had a serious book hangover from this one. And it took me a little bit of time to really determine why that was.

For starters, I have to say that I am a HUGE fan of His Dark Materials. I was obsessed with that series and have re-read those books many times. And while the ending of The Amber Spyglass was devastating, it felt so final to me. Having this chance to revisit Lyra was both so exciting and also terrifying. So many authors are going to back to past stories lately, and I feel like these new stories are either amazing or terrible. I really needed this book to not be terrible. I enjoyed the first Book of Dust, but it was a prequel. No one really dreams of prequels coming out. We dream of sequels. This was the book I had dreamed about for 16 years.

I got sucked in immediately. Reading about Lyra and Pan again was like connecting with an old friend. I got sucked into the mysteries of the roses and the feud between Lyra and Pan. I soaked up this magical version of Oxford. And I got lost in the politics of the Magisterium and the schools.

But, this was also kind of hard to read. Lyra and Pan were separated for most of the book. And they hated each other…and that didn’t make a ton of sense to me. They were fighting over philosophy and books. And Pan was upset that Lyra seemed to have lost her imagination. Lyra did seem rather melancholy for the whole story. What happened at the end of The Amber Spyglass greatly affected her. And I guess, knowing what I already knew about dust and daemons, it felt like Lyra was so divided and mad at herself more than anything.

This isn’t the youthful, dramatic, storyteller of the previous books. This is a smarter, wiser, more realistic Lyra that knows that sad things happen, and getting answers takes a lot of hard work. She’s a scholar and still knows how to pull out the charm when necessary (like when a friend is upset or when she needs help). But, she doesn’t use this charm at the drop of a hat any more.

And then there’s Malcom, a character I loved in the first Book of Dust, but now, not as much. There’s a definite love story in the works between him and Lyra, and I just hate it. He changed her diapers as a baby, and later taught her as a teacher. It just feels icky to me –nothing like what she had with Will. And I kept hoping for some outcome where she could reunite with Will. It is fantasy after all. Anything can be possible. But, we don’t get to see him at all in this book. Maybe in the next one?

I also don’t like that there’s this horrific scene near the end where Lyra is attacked by soldiers on a train. I just don’t feel like it was necessary for the story. It felt out of place and again like the love story with Malcom, just wrong. It took me out of the story in a bad way, and almost prevented me from finishing this. I know bad things happen and she’s not a child any more, but this still felt out of place. If it’s not needed for the story to continue, why is it in there?

I did love the writing. The writing is the same as it always was: descriptive and addicting. The world was fascinating. We get to travel east in this one (though I kept hoping for a trip north to a certain bear). There’s so many more levels of history and mythology and science, it was hard to put this book down (most of the time). I loved getting to know Lyra as an adult. I just didn’t love the love story. And I didn’t like that one scene at the end. And I still have so many questions. There was a definite cliffhanger. I need more. I cannot wait for book 3! I give this one an 8/10.