The Secret Commonwealth

This may be my favourite novel out of Pullman's entire body of work. It certainly engaged me at a level I have not felt since I first read The Golden Compass (/Northern Lights), and while that struck me as a wonderful book for young adults (and I have reread it several times long past my own youth), it always had an air of the Manichean simplicity that children's literature is often disparaged for exhibiting. The Secret Commonwealth does not simplify anything - in fact it takes all that was wonderful about the other books in the series and elaborates and questions every assumption those worlds created. There is something of Graham Greene here - the moral complexity and unsolvable difficulties of adulthood, mixed with a bit of intrigue and spectacular characterisation. Pullman takes Lyra, Malcolm, and others on a complex journey that kept me enraptured from the beginning through all seven hundred pages, and left me wishing for more. My only complaint is that the conclusion suffers from that malady that all excellent books in a series exhibit - it left me hungering for the sequel.

I might not have very different things to say to augment the critical reviews of this book which already exist, but I am not going to preface my review with any version of "I love [a:Philip Pullman|3618|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1614625372p2/3618.jpg] but...". Looking at this book isolatedly, it is by far the most disappointing book I have read this year.

Comparisons with 'His Dark Materials' will be rife, but let us take a moment to step back and focus on just this book. The events of [b:La Belle Sauvage|34128219|La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust, #1)|Philip Pullman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498930382l/34128219.SX50.jpg|14190696] are several years in the past, and the events of 'His Dark Materials' have taken place in the interim. In [b:The Secret Commonwealth|19034943|The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust #2)|Philip Pullman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563043403l/19034943.SY75.jpg|27058954] we are introduced to 'young adult' Lyra Belacqua/ Silvertongue, now in college. Lyra has been singularly lucky all these years - various entities have stepped in and helped her in her journey, and if not for some of them, we would not be reading this book about her. However, actions, no matter how far back in the past they were undertaken, will have consequences, and the book begins with Lyra beginning to comprehend just how cocooned and ensconced in her world she has been so far. Her relationship with Jordan College, which has seemed like a fixture all these years, is suddenly compromised. She learns of 'Oakley Street' and the events of La Belle Sauvage, and it is as if the rug has been pulled out from under her. She must build anew her relationships with people who have known her all her life.

One such relationship is with her daemon, Pantalaimon. He and Lyra are at odds from the start of the book - 'odds' is perhaps a tad soft; they hate each other. While Pullman does well in exploring new facets of the relationship between humans and their daemons, the bickering between Lyra and Pantalaimon is disembodied, lacking conviction, and bordering on the abstract - what is the nature of truth? Can it be attained through a rational approach, or can only an imaginative (and therefore irrational?) approach help ascertain it? Lyra and Pan are torn asunder by this fundamental question, which is where Pullman overdoes the severity of their separation. I could have understood Pan being simply disgruntled, but the events of The Secret Commonwealth are borne out of this mutual hatred for the other's school of thought (which I thought was very forced), and Lyra and Pan's journeys to reconcile with each other.

With a weak foundation such as this, the story progresses through a quagmire of ennui, introducing half-baked characters and dangling plot-lines. There is no way to say this without sounding like a millennial, but Pullman tries to come across as 'woke', and fails brilliantly. A hastily introduced rape scene does not contribute to the story in any way, nor does the author utilise this opportunity to address an all-pervasive rape culture (please read other people's reviews dealing with the rape episode - I could not agree more with each one of them). I found the haphazardly introduced characters who do not effectively contribute to the book very off-putting (loved Alison, though). The book is strewn with missed opportunities. An insipid ending (which could have been a cliffhanger if dealt with differently) left me questioning why I had plodded through almost 700 pages of this book.

I agree with Miles' conclusion in his review, where he states that this book definitely imperils Pullman's reputation as an author.

Still such an immersive world to step into, twenty years later, and I still love Lyra and Pan fiercely, though with the former it's hard to say why, as adult Lyra lacks so many of the qualities that made her loveable.

The glaring holes in the plot and the huge exposition dumps annoyed me, as did some of the more problematic aspects (the bad scary east with its terrorist 'men from the mountains') but it was satisfying reading the evils of the corporate neoliberal university invading the dreaming spires of Jordan College, as that's been the reality of universities since Northern Lights was published.

The theme of the human-daemon connection/separation remains as affecting as ever, and I've been stroking my wee dog Rowan more often that usual while reading. I don't know if there's been many psychoanalytic readings of His Dark Materials/The Book of Dust, but the retro quality of these books also goes quite well with the philosophical aspects, with the questions it's asking more resonant with the academic theory of the 90s and early 2000s rather than today.

It's fitting that it reminded me of my undergraduate years in lots of ways, and probably why the overwhelming pathos is of melancholy and dis-ease. The creeping sense of dread is augmented by today's political/social/ecological context as much as anything else - I read the chapter featuring a character's arrest by dubious authorities just after seeing the news of the guidelines for what external speakers now can't say in English schools. I had started this book because of I wanted escapism, but it felt more like dystopia than fantasy, and as a dear friend has written, 'your dystopian fiction won't save you now'.

[Plot warning: Cliffhanger! Content warnings: Rape, suicide.]

Starts off a bit slow, but once it gets its sea-legs it goes to some very dark places.

Reading this brought up a lot of sadness and grief for my pet, which makes perfect sense in hindsight since so much of it revolves around dæmon separation. There's a lot going on in this metaphor and Pullman is teasing out some interesting implications from it.

The more magical-realist bits about the titular Secret Commonwealth (and the interlude in Prague) are really solid. Some of the other, less-magical bits don't seem to hold water quite as well... but we'll see where it goes. Pacing is kind of all over the place and I didn't find the villains (whether people or philosophies) entirely convincing.

I am also very uneasy about the way this book seems to be setting up a romantic relationship between a 31-year-old professor and his 20-year-old student as if that's A-OK and not at all problematic... guess we'll have to wait for the third installment to know for sure, but it ain't looking good.