She’s studying and the studying is part of what has come between her and her daemon (two books in particular have her in their sway, a novel and a work of nonfiction that question the reality of daemons and explore an absolute intellectual rationalism in a way that frustrates and irritates Pan). The Book of Dust feels like a trilogy for adults who were children when His Dark Materials was first published. Pullman pulls no punches and the grisly opening to the book confirms what La Belle Sauvage hinted at: these are no longer stories intended for children (and if you have any doubts, the salty language will more than confirm that for you). So, let’s try and do it justice shall we? The book (which, it should be said, is about 140 pages longer than book 1, and had us thinking of The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass and wondering if the third volume might crack 1,000 pages in length) opens with Pantalaimon, Lyra’s demon, out and about in the night (now separated – one might go as far as to say estranged – Pan likes to grumpily wander at night) where he spies a murder. As those characters warn, “It’s very complicated.” Would it serve you to have recently read (or re-read) the other books mentioned above in the immediate run-up to reading this book? Quite possibly.

The action of The Secret Commonwealth leaps forward in time, to almost ten years after the events of His Dark Materials.

Do you have to have read His Dark Materials? Very much so. Before we get into it: do you have to have read La Bella Sauvage to read this? Indefatigably yes. You’ll remember, we had the first part, La Belle Sauvage, about 18 months ago, a story that was itself set a decade or so prior to the events captured in Pullman’s earlier trilogy, His Dark Materials. “It’s very complicated,” says one character to another at least twice over the course of The Secret Commonwealth, the second part of Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust.

La belle sauvage book 3