Lyra and her dæmon are at the center of The Secret Commonwealth, and probably the center of The Book of Dust too But then again: Oh, you’ve changed so much. Meeting her again after all these years is like running into a childhood friend at a school reunion and feeling a shock of estranged recognition hit you straight in the gut: Oh, you’re just the same as you always were. The Secret Commonwealth begins years after the events of His Dark Materials, and Lyra is 20 years old now, a college student. To be specific, we’re dealing with an adult Lyra here. She didn’t do anything much herself.īut from the first page of The Secret Commonwealth, Lyra is inarguably at the center of everything. And she appeared in 2017’s La Belle Sauvage, the first volume in The Book of Dust, which took place before the events of His Dark Materials, but in that book she was a baby.

Lyra Silvertongue - tough, tricky, tragic Lyra Lyra who is at the center of Pullman’s beloved His Dark Materials trilogy Lyra who lies brilliantly but has a magic instrument that will always tell the truth - is back at the center of a full-length novel for the first time since The Amber Spyglass came out in 2000.īetween 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. That’s the first and most important thought that swept through me when I opened up The Secret Commonwealth, the second volume in Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy.

The book of dust volume 1