CW: for rape, gross power dynamics between love interests, suicide, Spoilers.



Let me just say that I love His Dark Materials. That trilogy was formidable in shaping me. I still reread it at least every 2 or so years and enjoy it just as much with each new reading. (Shout out to the audio version!) and I really enjoyed La Belle Sauvage also. I had a few quibbles but nothing that would keep me from adding it to the biannual reread. But I could barely finish The Secret Commonwealth.

First off this

CW: for rape, gross power dynamics between love interests, suicide, Spoilers.



Let me just say that I love His Dark Materials. That trilogy was formidable in shaping me. I still reread it at least every 2 or so years and enjoy it just as much with each new reading. (Shout out to the audio version!) and I really enjoyed La Belle Sauvage also. I had a few quibbles but nothing that would keep me from adding it to the biannual reread. But I could barely finish The Secret Commonwealth.

First off this is not a middle grade novel. It is well into YA territory and didn’t make the jump very well either. I am fine with sex and violence and cussing. I mostly read adult novels and am also a big fan of having series grow in maturity with their characters over time. But this didn’t do a gradual growth along with the characters like Harry Potter did. This did a big jump from 11 year olds who survive a big flood journey (although with a completely unnecessary but not super graphic rape scene) to adults who watch someone blow their brains out (including vivid details of blood splatter) and a very graphic and completely unnecessary rape scene. This book (and La Belle Sauvage too) could have been kept as a middle grade and not lost any of the story. Hell it probably would have been better for it.



The story itself felt all over the place. The pacing was disjointed and I just felt pulled in a bunch of different directions with no real rhythm to it. It leans much more political intrigue and much less fantastical and feels weaker for it. It felt like Pullman had a big list of things he was mad about and tried to figure out a way to get them all included. Which is fine! Part of why I love fantasy is how it used the fantastic as a metaphor for real world issues! I have read many books where this works! But it really doesn’t here. It just feels preachy and without a pulse. This needed a heavier hand editing. What even is the plot? So many characters and ideas introduced and then left behind. There are so many decisions that characters make that just dont really make any sense except that Pullman is trying to Make A Point.



I had a really hard time caring about characters. They all felt so flat. This feeling is intensified because we have spent so much time with these same characters in previous stories only to completely change the fundamentals of the characters we know and love. The only explanation we are given for this is that ‘well 20 years has past so of course they have grown and changed.’ Its very frustrating.

Lyra for example. I adore preteen Lyra. She is spunky and headstrong and is confident in herself. 20 year old Lyra does not critically think for herself, is anxiety-ridden, and very unsure. That is something I can totally relate to! But you have to give me a bridge to how she got there! Lyra is like a completely different person and it is jarring, especially with the timeline jumping between the HDM trilogy and in The Book of Dust trilogy. I wish The Secret Commonwealth had a chapter or two at the beginning that bridged the time gap between the end of HDMs and The Secret Commonwealth. One that touched on how Pan and Lyra dealt with the trauma of all they had been through, including separating. That would help us see how Lyra got to where she is mentally - using pure reason as a trauma defense mechanism. (Are there no therapists in this world??) As someone with bad anxiety, I get it and I want to read about one of my favorite characters struggle with this balance. especially if you throw in academia into the mix. But we dont really even get that satisfactorily explored. I would be super into exploring Lyra’s attempt to balance out the ‘adult’ tendencies of pure logic and skepticism with her ‘child-like’ tendencies of thinking outside the box and being headstrong and energetic. But again that doesn’t really happen. Lyra has a few overly verbose conversations with herself that reminded me of some mind-numbingly boring Tinder dates with dudes who considered themselves philosophers but really just liked to hear themselves talk. Its not that she is unlike-able. Unlikable is fine. Its just that I am not invested in her as a character, even though 11 year old Lyra is one of my favorite characters ever.

And its not just seeing how Lyra got to where she was but how Pan did also. His whole ‘I am leaving to search for your imagination’ thing felt ridiculous. Its as if Pan thinks that Lyra’s imagination is a solid thing that could be kept in a box and was physically stolen. Are you still 8 years old Pan? I could see Pan saying “I’m leaving until you get your imagination back” as a way to say “I am leaving until you think on things and get right with yourself” but thats not how it comes off. Pan is going on a quest to find a solid thing and it just feels like a cheap plot device to separate the two.

Another character that didn’t make the transition very well is Malcolm. He was great in La Belle Sauvage! And now he feels older than his early 30’s and is made super creepy by his being romantically in love with Lyra since forever. He has know her since a baby. He was in love with her when he was HER TEACHER in his mid twenty’s and she in her mid teens. THAT IS GROSS. And to try to excuse that by having another female character say that it is fine because they are both adults now, psh, I call bullshit. Its not just about what is legal or not, but where you are in life experiences. Plus the only real interactions we are told that Malcom has with Lyra is when he was trying to teach her when she was 15 and that she was a little shit and he was a boring old teacher. If he was ‘in love’ with her then, it certainly wasnt because they shared some deep common bond. It would have had to been that he was physically attracted to her and was in love with the idea of her. You can not truly be in love with a person if you dont actually know the person. But we are supposed to believe that it is pure love because Malcolm is a Nice Guy. Again this is just so gross. Lyra is not interested in Malcolm, doesn’t even like him as a person. Sees him as an old professor, that she just doesn’t particularly click with. Then she finds out that he knew and saved her as a baby, and is forced to see him in a new light. That’s all fine and well, but after that one storytelling evening, we are supposed to believe that Lyra is going to fall in love with him after having only that one interaction?? Lyra keeps having conversations with older women who suggest that one can fake being in love with someone, that you can learn to love someone, that friendship can turn into romantic love if given enough time and you try. It feels so dang forced. His Dark Materials trilogy already explored the whole Adam and Eve allegory, did we really need to attempt to do it again?

And the whole ancient epic poem about the lovers fighting her uncle and searching for magical roses, was just way to on the nose. Like really??? Did it have to fit so dang perfect? I would not have rolled my eyes nearly so hard if Mal had tried to grasp at straws to find similarities and Aster called him out on it.





Aside from the all-over-the-place storytelling I have a really big problem with Pullman’s handling of women. I’ve already talked about the gross Mal/Lyra thing. There is completely unnecessary conversation that just shits all over sex workers for no reason. Like literally, there is zero reason for this to be included. There is a section that hits upon how the deamon’s gender is always the opposite of the person. I was really disappointed (but ultimately not surprised) that this wasnt used as an opportunity to break out of the hetero-norm instead of reinforcing it. And then my biggest problem - graphic is unnecessary rape scenes.

There is really no reason for Lyra to get raped. Why is this here Pullman?? To make this book a bit edgier so as not to be middle grade? To show the hardships that Lyra had to go through to find her daemon? Why do women always have to get raped?? And when she is ‘safe’, her first though is to blame her rape on Pan? Because if he had never left then she would never have been on that training car with those soldiers and gotten raped. What?? This story misses absolutely nothing if the whole dang scene had been deleted. (Same with the rape scene from La Belle Sauvage. I am still mad about it).



I am just so frustrated. I hate to leave a series unfinished, but I dont know if I will make time to read the final book in the trilogy. Life is too short to read books you dont enjoy.





