Review: The Book of Dust Vol 2: The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman (2019)

by Mark Richardson

I am sure that many of you will have seen His Dark Materials on BBC TV. For those of you who know nothing of that, or of the trilogy of novels by Philip Pullman that inspired the series, then I would have to say, reluctantly and with affection, that this review is not for you. Sorry. Apart from anything else, it would take far too long to explain even the basics to you. I am afraid that this is one of those clubs which, for the moment at least, you are not a member. I envy you though: you have some great reading ahead of you. Just do not start with this one: go for Northern Lights and start a VERY unusual journey.

Actually, I do feel uncomfortable in a way about this: my attitude to Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, for instance, is largely governed by the fact that I never got on board with them, and I now have no desire whatsoever to join those gangs of devotees. So, I cannot really tell with any certainty whether The Secret Commonwealth is actually any good. Should it be judged by its ability to stand by itself? If so, I do not think it is very satisfying. Or should it be read with no fewer than four books hovering in the immediate vicinity, constantly of influence, sometimes directly but more often very indirectly colouring one’s reading of the book? If so, it becomes immensely engaging.

This book is the second of Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy, featuring the focal character of His Dark Materials, Lyra Bellacqua. Her universe is rapidly becoming ever more complex, with overtones of Alan Garner, JRR Tolkein, John Milton and Edmund Spenser swirling around in the haze of Dust. The first book is La Belle Sauvage, which is essentially a sort of origin story, dealing with events prior to Northern Lights. A rollicking adventure story in a flooded world of Oxford and London, it gives an account of how Lyra arrived at Jordan College, the starting point of Pullman’s first trilogy. The Secret Commonwealth, by contrast, is a sequel to the rest of that trilogy, with Lyra now in her second year as an Oxford undergraduate in the parallel universe that contains Brytain, dæmons and the powerful Magesterium.

The pressure of events of the past still weighs heavily upon her. One in particular, the necessary but traumatic separation between Lyra and her dæmon Pantalaimon at the culmination of events of the previous trilogy, has never had a chance to be resolved. Part of the shock of this novel is connected with this trauma. She and Pantalaimon find it impossible to live together, but their separation, magnificently explored here, is painful and, seemingly, unique. The way it is described has echoes of break ups in our more familiar world, but the intensity is searingly portrayed, showing how much greater the stakes are in Lyra’s world for such a separation of being and soul, as it were.

Another pressure is the role of the Church, still dominant in the universe, led by its quasi-military, semi-Jesuitical and utterly inhuman Magesterium. Its despotic, authoritarian quest for total rule is undiminished in both fervour and ruthlessness. The plot involves a mysterious link between spiritual power and the roses grown in Central Asia. Rumours of slaughter and of ‘men from the mountains’ are filtering into Oxford, and Lyra is pulled into the mystery.

The novel does not focus just on Lyra: there are several people’s strands of stories that weave in and around Lyra’s, and it becomes apparent that some of the stories and people are rooted in La Belle Sauvage. But this is a very different book from that one. La Belle Sauvage is essentially an action adventure story: its style is familiar, and its content and style is relatively direct and straight-forward. The Secret Commonwealth, however, is anything but that: it is violent, complex and both subtle and all-too direct. Characters journey East, away from a deceptively familiar and reassuring world into a much more uncertain and dangerous one. People are tortured, mutilated and killed along the way. Pullman has never shied away from the pain and death he can inflict on characters. The latter stages of the story, indeed, contain an event far more shocking than anything seen thus far: its graphic violence is unsettling, although I feel entirely justified. Others will have their views, though.

The end of the novel, long though it is, comes too early. It finishes with a quotation from The Faerie Queene, a rich source for story-telling, but for me the experience at the end is best summed up by a contemporary of Spenser, William Shakespeare. I did not want to stop reading, but had to, because there was no more. I will have to wait, for however long that will be, before the final novel appears. I was enchanted, and now rudely awoken, but yearning for more enchantment. As Caliban in The Tempest said, “When I waked, I cried to dream again.”