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Book of Dust, Volume 2
Lyra Silvertongue's adventures in the North are long over - the windows between the many worlds have been sealed, and her beloved Will is lost to her.
She does still have the alethiometer: the truth-telling device given to her by the master of Jordan College, which guided her journey.
Lyra doesn't know the full story of the alethiometer, though. Or the role that young Malcolm Polstead played in bringing both the instrument and baby Lyra to Jordan. She's now a twenty-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia's College. To her, Malcolm is Dr. Polstead, an overly solicitous professor she would prefer to avoid.
But intrigue is swirling around Lyra once more. Her daemon Pantalaimon is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past. They learn of a city haunted by daemons, of a desert said to hold the secret of Dust.
Powerful forces are about to throw Lyra and Malcolm together once again. And the dangers they face will challenge everything they thought they knew about the world, and about themselves.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (09-25-2025)
I missed commenting last week so I'm doubling up: All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert (heart wrenching, brutally unabashed as only Gilbert can pull off, raw truth at every step); Apostle's Cove by William Kent Krueger (a long, tedious, 10-hour listening journey to arrive at an abrupt dé...
-Sunny
"Relish the chance to catch up with Lyra and return to her ever-expanding world… A generation of fans is burning to reunite with Lyra for the first time since His Dark Materials, and this fall's BBC/HBO adaptation of the series will only stoke the fire." - Booklist
"Skillfully weaves in deeper themes of change and of love's complexities, ruminations on the nature of evil, evidence of magical truths beneath reality's veneer… Exhilarating." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Secret Commonwealth was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Philip Pullman was born in Norwich on October 19, 1946 to Audrey and Alfred Pullman. The early part of his childhood was spent traveling from base to base as his father, and later stepfather, were part of the Royal Air Force (RAF). At age seven, following the death of his father, Philip and his younger brother Francis moved back to Britain to live with their grandfather in Norfolk, an Anglican clergyman. Their mother moved to London to find work.
When Pullman was eight, a stepfather - another RAF pilot - entered the Pullman family and once again the family moved from base to base. For a time, they settled in Australia. In Australia, he first discovered the wonders of comic books, a force that would later influence both his writing and illustrating of future stories. The family moved ...
... Full Biography
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Link to Philip Pullman's Website
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