276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two: From the world of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - now a major BBC series (The book of dust, 2)

£14.975£29.95Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Strauss keeps this information from the Magisterium, as they will certainly consider the rose industry to be heretical.

Exclusive to the paperback edition, Chris Wormell's new original illustrations bring Lyra's world vividly to life. Covertly attending a Magisterium congress in Geneva, Malcolm speaks to the philosopher Simon Talbot, without realising he has been recognised.All of those themes were much more savagely represented in "The Death of Grass" for example, which was on my English syllabus in my teens at school. Most recently, he has illustrated the cover of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust , and has lent his woodcut style to Dinosaurium . Delamare consolidates his power and Malcolm continues his investigations, learning about Delamare’s background, intentions and interests in the rose industry from Bonneville. And the world of Lyra's Oxford, so welcoming at first, suddenly turns darker, yes, but also infinitely weirder.

Pantalaimon confronts the author Gottfried Brande at his home in Wittenberg, but is forced to leave when Brande pointedly ignores him. If rationality can’t see things like the secret commonwealth, it’s because rationality’s vision is limited … We need to imagine as well as measure …” This is Lyra thinking, but it is also rather too clearly Pullman speaking to us. Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, the second volume of The Book of Dust, Pullman does something riskier: he jumps forward 20 years – a decade on from the memorably sad, satisfyingly inevitable ending of The Amber Spyglass – to give us the story of Lyra as a young adult.Malcolm is 11 years older than Lyra and spent nearly all of La Belle Sauvage caring for her while she was a baby; now, he is a professor and she is a student, and also he was briefly her teacher when she was 15.

Indeed, Pullman is more tempted to draw parallels with our world’s discontents than he has ever been. I read the paper book and so have no idea about Kindle classifications - for me this book was suitable for the "young adult" market and adults, I would have no concerns about my 15 year old daughter reading it. The links between this world and ours, the daemons, and other parts of Pullman's universe were just as successful for me as in the original books, introducing here more of the self doubt and mental health challenges of emerging (and full) adulthood after the certainties of the 12(ish) year old Lyra and Will before. Between then and now, Pullman has given Lyra a starring role in a couple of novellas, slight little things that mostly existed as a chance to revisit the rich mythology of the world of dæmons and witches in which she lives. Chris has created many award-winning books, including Molly and the Night Monster (shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal), Two Frogs (winner of the Nestlé Bronze Award), and One Smart Fish (winner of the Booktrust Early Years Awards Best Picture Book) .Will and Lyra fell in love over the course of that trilogy and then wrenchingly, heartbreakingly parted forever, and while he doesn’t make a miraculous reappearance in The Secret Commonwealth, Lyra thinks about him all the time. Her daemon goes on a long journey to Wittenberg (the city of Martin Luther, where Hamlet went to university) to accuse the stern intellectual, Gottfried Brande, of stealing Lyra’s imagination from her. Pullman’s story is still thought-provoking … This book elegantly weaves in live issues, from Europe’s refugee crisis to facts in the post-truth era. The passage feels slightly dated, as though it was written in accordance with ideas about consent and power dynamics that were in vogue 10 years ago but are no longer considered conventional wisdom. In an early scene in The Secret Commonwealth, she bossily forces a classmate to skip a lecture and sneak off campus for lunch because Lyra can see that the girl needs comforting over something; Lyra both wants to comfort her, because she’s kind, and wants to know what the story is, because she’s nosy — just like she always was.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment