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