Teen Tuesday: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

Image: Penguin Random House

The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman. The Book of Dust, book 2. Unabridged downloadable e-audiobook, ~20 hours. Read by Michael Sheen. Listening Library/ Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, October, 2019. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library.)

The last Teen Tuesday of the year/ decade features The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman, book #2 in the Book of Dust trilogy. Book one, La Belle Sauvage, told the story of Lyra as an infant. The Secret Commonwealth takes place about seven years after events depicted in The Subtle Knife. (The final book of the His Dark Materials trilogy.) 

Lyra is now a college student, and a rather arrogant one at that. She has come under the thrall of rationalists. She an her daemon, Pantalaimon aren't getting along. Pan believes she has lost her imagination. He witnesses a murder and discovers that this man and his daemon can separate when his daemon asks for Pan's help. The dying man entrusts Pan with a wallet that contains a key to a locker that contains a rucksack. Little do Lyra and Pan know that the secrets hidden in the rucksack have something to do with them as well as the location of a rare rose, one which the Magisterium is eager to locate. 

High fantasy at its very best, this sweeping saga will enthrall older fans of His Dark Materials as Lyra's story continues into adulthood.