A review by ruth24
The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

3.0

3.5

This is the second installment of the Book of Dust series, which chronologically comes at a time after His Dark Materials when Lyra is 20 years old. I love Pullman's writing and the His Dark Materials/Book of Dust world, but this was my least favourite of the series so far. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but I wasn't as enthralled and I felt frustrated with certain aspects of the plot

Spoiler

(Lyra and Pantalaimon's arguments and separation and their respective journeys, the budding romance between Lyra and Malcolm (who knew her as a baby, yuck).

The ending was an absolute cliffhanger and so frustrating!! But I guess I'll just have to wait for the next book.

Spoiler

I thought it was a great idea to have Lyra grow up and study at the University and over time become less imaginative and open-minded, which would frustrate Pantalaimon. It's like she's fighting with two sides of herself, which represents something a lot of us go through as we get older. Though, obviously Lyra really experienced a lot of these 'secret commonwealth' things, like meeting witches and the talking polar bear Iorek, so I find it hard to believe that she would 'forget' that or think she might have imagined it.