Lyra Silvertongue, once a traveler between worlds, has grown up. Seven years after she left the love of her life in a different universe, she still bears a wounded heart. Worse, she and her daemon, Pantalaimon, no longer get along. Their relationship is one of disagreement and discomfort until the day Pantalaimon disappears. Lyra must embark on a cross-continental journey to find him even as religious and governmental institutions are tracking her down to destroy her.
I adored the original His Dark Materials trilogy and, two books in, I’m enjoying this one as well. Lyra is no longer a child. She is still the same person, yet vastly different. Starting this book was like coming back to an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, one who has changed with the years–and you’ve changed too. At first, you’re not sure if you still fit together, if you still have that easy conversation you were used to. After a reintroduction, a brief catch up, you find that you do still fit together and your friend is as beloved as she’s always been. My heart ached for Lyra, who is now less sure of herself and her place in the world. She doesn’t seem to fit anywhere and it’s a feeling to which I can acutely relate. Her relationship with Pan was so strained in the first part of the book and I just wanted them to hug each other and go back to their easy love again.
The plot of The Secret Commonwealth is as thrilling as any of the original trilogy. Lyra travels from England to the Middle East in the course of the book and meets friends and foes along the way. Meanwhile, the POVs of supporting characters offer glimpses into the various agencies hunting Lyra, lending even more urgency to the book. I could barely put it down. As with all the Lyra books, each character, no matter how small, has been deeply developed and comes with their own histories, hurts, and complicated motivations. Normally, I am annoyed by head-jumping points of view because I always want to get back to the last person I was reading about. I didn’t feel that way during this story.
My biggest, non-spoilery complaint is that Malcolm has developed romantic feelings for Lyra. While not a huge focal point of the story, they didn’t seem natural. It felt more like the author wanted his main male and female protagonists to end up together, which I assume happens in the third book. Rather than leaving me with a sense of inevitability of the relationship, Malcolm’s feelings left me with some uncomfortable questions. When did he fall in love with her? She was a baby when Malcolm saved her in the last book and The Secret Commonwealth mentions that she was briefly his student a few years ago–still a child. Did he fall in love with her when she was a teenager? They haven’t seen too much of each other in the intervening years. It sounds like they’ve barely had a conversation! Is he infatuated with her based on what little he knows? I don’t know and the text doesn’t really provide an answer. Lyra is an adult in this book and I usually don’t scorn a romance with age differences (provided the parties are on an equal footing in terms of power), but the romantic plotline didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Maybe I’ll feel differently in the third book. I do want to root for them after all. I just need an actual reason to.
Overall, I really liked The Secret Commonwealth and I think anyone who’s read His Dark Materials will also like it. It’s both familiar and new–and very exciting–and I can’t want to read the next book.