16 June 2020

Review: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

Hardcover, 633 pages
Published 2019

Borrowed from my wife
Read November 2019
The Book of Dust, Volume Two: The Secret Commonwealth
by Philip Pullman

This was okay. I think it's just not the genre one would expect from a His Dark Materials follow-up. The Golden Compass was a quest fantasy, one of the best I can remember; this is... essentially an espionage thriller? Those have very different terms, and unfortunately, those terms don't really capture what made me want to read the book in the first place. I did appreciate the deepening of Lyra's world, but Lyra herself felt lost in this book. Way too many times was she bailed out of a situation not by her own cleverness, but because someone happened to notice her and take pity on her and help her out. What happened to the clever Lyra Silvertongue? I know that's a plot point, but it's not very interesting to read about a character who used to rescue herself constantly be rescued by other people. The potential is there, though, so hopefully Pullman uses this foundation to tie it all up effectively whenever volume three comes out.

No comments:

Post a Comment