Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Secret Commonwealth

Arghh! What a frustrating book... Firstly, it basically ends on an unfinished cliffhanger. Secondly, it started off superbly only to divebomb at the end.

The Secret Commonwealth is the second book in this trilogy by Phillip Pullman, following La Belle Sauvage, which I reviewed here.

Twenty years after the events of the first book, our previous protagonist Malcolm Polstead is now 31 years old and a college professor. Our deuteragonist Alice has also grown up and gone to work at the college. But most of the book instead follows Lyra, who is no longer the baby that Malcolm and Alice rescued, but a 20-year-old college scholar.

Having experienced the events of the His Dark Materials trilogy in her youth and sworn against the religious Magisterium, Lyra has grown into a cynical, skeptical adult. Without religion, she feels like the universe is cold, uncaring and meaningless - the "random jostling of atoms". Her romantic forays have turned into dead ends and her studies with the aleithiometer are a struggle. She even starts to believe a popular author's thesis that dæmons are "just imaginary".
Alienated by this cynical Lyra, her dæmon Pantalaimon begins to argue with her. The passages about their conflict are some of the best in the book: they not only reveal Pan and Lyra's feelings but also the philosophical discussions that we love to see in a Pullman novel. The audiobook narrator's performance elevates these sections even further.
Lyra's troubles continue when she discovers that the Magisterium knows about her existence at the college, and they are still trying to hunt her down. This made for a great inciting incident. And the bad guys involved are such slimy bastards, like

the new head of the college

, that I was seething on Lyra's behalf.

The novel continued on strongly until, bizarrely, Lyra and

Malcolm

develop a mutual unspoken crush on eachother. Putting their difference of

age

aside, I just didn't see the point of this mutual crush since it doesn't go anywhere. I would have understood it if it was used to show that

Lyra is still pining after Will (because Malcolm has parallels to Will), but ultimately realizes she has to move on and "build the Republic of Heaven where she is"

. But that's not what happened - the two are separated at a certain point in the story and that's it. No conclusion.

The other bizarre plot event was the attempted

sexual assault

on Lyra. This came off as really weird and inappropriate.

Most annoyingly, the ending of this book feels just as incomplete as the previous one. It's very much a "To Be Continued". For a book that's just under 700 pages, you would expect to have accomplished some kind of conclusion in that time, but no. This problem colours the entire ending of the book, which has Lyra still investigating secrets in an anticlimactic fashion rather than engaging in a showdown or final conflict.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and was interested to know what would happen next, but these issues definitely marred the narrative.

Content Warnings

norwegianforestreader's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

erinwolf1997's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

the_pysselfia's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Content Warnings

ilereads's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Avevo la sensazione che questo libro non mi sarebbe piaciuto e soprattutto avevo paura di rincontrare Lyra e di trovarla troppo diversa da quel bellissimo personaggio della trilogia originale a cui sono tanta affezionata. In realtà mi è piaciuto, decisamente di più rispetto al primo volume "La Belle Savage" che mi aveva lasciata un pò perplessa. Lyra non è più una bambina e la decisione che ha preso molti anni prima di separarsi da Pan per ritrovare l'anima di Roger ora mostra tutte le sue conseguenze. Il rapporto di Lyra con il suo daimon arriva a una vera e proprio rottura in questo libro e ora dovranno cercare di ritrovarsi e riacquistare fiducia l'uno nell'altra per essere di nuovo insieme e completi. Intanto il Magisterium sta cercando di nascondere un segreto che riguarda delle rose che crescono solo nel lontano Oriente e che si capisce essere fondamentali per svelare qualcosa in più sul mistero della Polvere. Lyra, così come Pan e Malcolm, dovrà così affrontare un viaggio molto lungo e difficile da Oxford fino all'estremo Oriente, passando per molte tappe intermedie come Costantinopoli o Smirne. Sicuramente è un libro molto cupo che ha perso completamente l'atmosfera fanciullesca della trilogia originale; in fondo la separazione dal proprio daimon la si può interpretare come una metafora della depressione o comunque di uno scollamento da se stessi, e ci sono delle scene molto forti. Tuttavia Lyra dentro di sè ha ancora quel carattere furbo e vivace che pian piano si mostra durante il suo viaggio in cui dovrà cercare di abbandonare la sua visione razionale e scettica del mondo e ritrovare l'immaginazione che ha perso, grazie anche alle storie dei gyziani sul Regno Segreto; un mondo notturno popolato da creature fantastiche come fate e fuochi fatui e che si può guardare solo con la coda dell'occhio, mettendo da parte la razionalità.

Content Warnings

mfiegel's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

marie_is_reading's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

nytephoenyx's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

I think when he was writing The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman just really wanted all the fans of His Dark Materials to shut up and stop asking what happened to Lyra next. After teasing longtime fans and readers with La Belle Sauvage, finally a book about Lyra Silvertongue is announced and the story we get is self-important and depressing. If you’re a fan of The Golden Compass and you haven’t read the gigantic tomes in the decades-later follow-up series yet… well, you’re welcome. I’ve done it for you so you don’t have to suffer.

First of all, the plot was… boring, I guess? There were a few different storylines running simultaneously through different POVs and I personally did not find any of them interesting. In fact, I’m a bit perplexed as to what kind of story Pullman wanted to tell, and further confused as to why it’s all Lyra’s story again. It’s almost as though both La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth were worldbuilding notes that Pullman had about Oxford and its world… but he wanted to loop in Lyra because he wanted to draw the readers of His Dark Materials into his new series. Realistically, I believe both the novels in The Book of Dust would be better served in the same world of His Dark Materials but following different characters.

Pantelimon is absolutely correct in saying Lyra has lost her imagination. As a character, she seems to have lost more than that. I understand that the character has grown up, but she feels like an entirely different character than the one we left in The Amber Spyglass. She has lost her curiosity and interest in the world. She’s lost her drive and optimism. Her entire journey in His Dark Materials did not take this from her, but going to school has. This, in particular, made me feel like the story should have belonged to a different character.

There were a couple aspects that made me a bit uncomfortable, writing-wise. There are scenes regarding homosexuality that I don’t feel Pullman was classified to write, and frankly, made me cringe a bit with the way he spoke about it. It’s one of those things that, in reading, it feels more like he was expressing his own (problematic) understanding of the LGBTQIAP+ community. From a social perspective, I hated that he said one could learn to love a woman after a while. From a worldbuilding perspective, it seemed like he went against how he explained daemons in his world earlier. There were also scenes where Lyra was wearing a niqāb, and Pullman was not subtle in how he wrote Lyra behavior felt like a judgment on the logic of niqābs and hijabs and I just… didn’t… like it. Finally, there is an attempte rape scenes that, again, I don’t feel Pullman was qualified to write. I dunno. Maybe I’m being overly critical. Maybe I’m reading into something that isn’t there. Either way, I didn’t like it. If he consulted outside sources or had sensitivity readers or any of that, it certainly isn’t references in the Author’s Note.

The story doesn’t become interesting until the last half hour of the twenty hour audiobook. Most the story is a journey, but Pullman seems to have lost his skill at making that journey interesting without making it vulgar. I just… don’t think I’m compelled enough to read the final book because both of the previous two have been far too long and went little to nowhere. I’m just not invested enough in the story to waste more hours of my life seeing the ending.

I love, I love His Dark Materials. But I can’t in good conscious recommend either La Belle Sauvage or The Secret Commonwealth. I was hoping the series was going to get better, but it hasn’t. If you have fond memories of His Dark Materials, I’m inclined to recommend avoiding this one as not to tarnish what you know of Lyra. Enjoy her adventure, you don’t need to know what happens next. Your time is more valuable than that.

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