Scan barcode
A review by laurasauras
The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
slow-paced
1.5
I am heartbroken to be giving this such a low rating. I loved His Dark Materials so much, but this book was genuinely so hard to finish, and that's even with me listening to it. It's the most disappointed I've been in a book for a really long time.
At the beginning, I actually really liked the conflict between Lyra and Pan and getting to see Lyra interact with people as an adult. I was interested by the murder mystery and ... that's about when it started to unravel. Because Pan was right, Lyra is not the same person, not even a little bit. It's not just that she's lost her imagination, whatever that's supposed to mean, she's so brittle. I mean, she's clearly traumatised as hell, so let's be clear I'm not remotely condoning Pan leaving. I'm not sure why Pan, who loves and knows her more than anyone, would respond to her trauma and reaching out to things that feel steady and real and as far away from her fantastical experiences as possible with coldness and by making her feel even more abandoned.
The insertion of Malcolm and Alice into Lyra's story as if they'd always been there kinda grated, but whatever. The continued idolisation of Malcolm felt ... really ... weird. Why is he still the best and bravest boy in the world? Why is he in love with Lyra, this sopping wet, broken girl 11 years younger than him? It makes his devotion to her in LBS feel retrospectively creepy. Pullman, did you not hear about the entire world finding it creepy that Jacob was in love with Renesmee in Bella's womb? Why would you do that without magic involved? Why would you have a character fall in love with an infant and then continue to be in love with her all the way up until adulthood? Why would you go out of your way to have two different people catch him out on it (how? he literally did nothing to indicate it?) and tell him it was okay. From when Hannah mentioned it, I was like please say psyche. And then, out of LITERALLY nowhere, Lyra's basically in love with him too? She barely recognised him at the beginning of the book and then after two (brief!) conversations she's thinking longingly about him for the rest of the book! I don't really give a shit about an age gap, it's the fact that he's been in a position of looking after her since she was six months old that disturbs me.
The way that this book treats women is ... Like, okay. Okay. Let me sit down backwards on this chair for a minute so that I can talk with a frank and open posture. All the women in this novel are Strong, and they're equally as complex as the men (though as I mentioned in my review of LBS, I don't think Pullman's characters are ever really complex), but they're also ... Special Because They're Women. When Malcolm's mum and the secretary kicked a couple of secret agents' arses, I didn't think "woo! girl power!" I thought, okay, 10 points for feminism I guess. It felt ridiculous and pandering. And from almost page one, Lyra is constantly getting male attention, which she thinks about a lot. At one point, she thinks that she's probably always liked older men, not because she felt safe from their being attracted to her, but because she's safe from being attracted to them, and ... that's not what safety is. If one of the father figures in her life had expressed attraction to her, she should have felt WAY more unsafe than if she thought one of them was hot. Is that a difficult concept? The whole point of her having father figures in HDM (I thought) was to contrast them with Asriel, who refused to acknowledge himself as her father, but this rewrites that and injects child-Lyra with an awareness of attraction, which is just so uncomfortable. And then there's the sexual assault, which is graphic and fucking awful and serves literally no purpose. Like, at least with Alice's rape in the last book it gave Malcolm the power to separate. This one just showed that it's not safe to travel as a woman. And! A minute and a half after being assaulted! Lyra! Falls asleep! In a carriage! With a strange man! What the fuck!!!! I know she was injured, but she doesn't even consider that that's the stupidest thing she has ever done.
And then there's her reaction to being given a niqab. One minute she's grateful for the fact that she's finally not drawing any attention to herself (the story's obsession with being invisible is really fucking annoying, because it's not supernatural and she's not very good at it but it keeps pretending the opposite) and then the next she's flinging it off every opportunity and feeling oppressed! Mate! And she feels stifled in the heat, which I guess is fair except that niqabs are made to be worn in the heat. If I was in the Middle East, I wouldn't hesitate to put one on and I'd be grateful for the sun protection. It felt like Islamophobia, which was reinforced by how literally the only people she's not afraid of in the Middle East are from England. I mean, the whole entire world is out to attack Lyra throughout this book, so it's hard to put that entirely down to racism, but it became so much more pronounced in the Middle East.
And then there's the story. What happens? One day, Pan leaves Lyra saying he's going to find her imagination, and she goes on a quest to try and find him. And literally nothing else happens, but a whole lot of characters that don't matter sure are introduced, and there's a weird political subplot that has nothing to do with Lyra happening. Apart from the fact that Lyra is travelling through countries that are impacted by the rose oil thing, and the fact that the church is involved and they want to capture her for ??? reasons?, 50% of the content does not relate to Lyra. Why does it take her so long to get to the last page of the book? What purpose did Pan's perspective serve apart from showing that whatshisname has a fake daemon? This book was 600+ pages of what should have been maybe 3 chapters of the next book, which I don't think I'll even bother to read because I definitely didn't gain anything out of reading this apart from becoming so fed up with the story that I started noticing Pullman's over-dependence on adverbs.
At the beginning, I actually really liked the conflict between Lyra and Pan and getting to see Lyra interact with people as an adult. I was interested by the murder mystery and ... that's about when it started to unravel. Because Pan was right, Lyra is not the same person, not even a little bit. It's not just that she's lost her imagination, whatever that's supposed to mean, she's so brittle. I mean, she's clearly traumatised as hell, so let's be clear I'm not remotely condoning Pan leaving. I'm not sure why Pan, who loves and knows her more than anyone, would respond to her trauma and reaching out to things that feel steady and real and as far away from her fantastical experiences as possible with coldness and by making her feel even more abandoned.
The insertion of Malcolm and Alice into Lyra's story as if they'd always been there kinda grated, but whatever. The continued idolisation of Malcolm felt ... really ... weird. Why is he still the best and bravest boy in the world? Why is he in love with Lyra, this sopping wet, broken girl 11 years younger than him? It makes his devotion to her in LBS feel retrospectively creepy. Pullman, did you not hear about the entire world finding it creepy that Jacob was in love with Renesmee in Bella's womb? Why would you do that without magic involved? Why would you have a character fall in love with an infant and then continue to be in love with her all the way up until adulthood? Why would you go out of your way to have two different people catch him out on it (how? he literally did nothing to indicate it?) and tell him it was okay. From when Hannah mentioned it, I was like please say psyche. And then, out of LITERALLY nowhere, Lyra's basically in love with him too? She barely recognised him at the beginning of the book and then after two (brief!) conversations she's thinking longingly about him for the rest of the book! I don't really give a shit about an age gap, it's the fact that he's been in a position of looking after her since she was six months old that disturbs me.
The way that this book treats women is ... Like, okay. Okay. Let me sit down backwards on this chair for a minute so that I can talk with a frank and open posture. All the women in this novel are Strong, and they're equally as complex as the men (though as I mentioned in my review of LBS, I don't think Pullman's characters are ever really complex), but they're also ... Special Because They're Women. When Malcolm's mum and the secretary kicked a couple of secret agents' arses, I didn't think "woo! girl power!" I thought, okay, 10 points for feminism I guess. It felt ridiculous and pandering. And from almost page one, Lyra is constantly getting male attention, which she thinks about a lot. At one point, she thinks that she's probably always liked older men, not because she felt safe from their being attracted to her, but because she's safe from being attracted to them, and ... that's not what safety is. If one of the father figures in her life had expressed attraction to her, she should have felt WAY more unsafe than if she thought one of them was hot. Is that a difficult concept? The whole point of her having father figures in HDM (I thought) was to contrast them with Asriel, who refused to acknowledge himself as her father, but this rewrites that and injects child-Lyra with an awareness of attraction, which is just so uncomfortable. And then there's the sexual assault, which is graphic and fucking awful and serves literally no purpose. Like, at least with Alice's rape in the last book it gave Malcolm the power to separate. This one just showed that it's not safe to travel as a woman. And! A minute and a half after being assaulted! Lyra! Falls asleep! In a carriage! With a strange man! What the fuck!!!! I know she was injured, but she doesn't even consider that that's the stupidest thing she has ever done.
And then there's her reaction to being given a niqab. One minute she's grateful for the fact that she's finally not drawing any attention to herself (the story's obsession with being invisible is really fucking annoying, because it's not supernatural and she's not very good at it but it keeps pretending the opposite) and then the next she's flinging it off every opportunity and feeling oppressed! Mate! And she feels stifled in the heat, which I guess is fair except that niqabs are made to be worn in the heat. If I was in the Middle East, I wouldn't hesitate to put one on and I'd be grateful for the sun protection. It felt like Islamophobia, which was reinforced by how literally the only people she's not afraid of in the Middle East are from England. I mean, the whole entire world is out to attack Lyra throughout this book, so it's hard to put that entirely down to racism, but it became so much more pronounced in the Middle East.
And then there's the story. What happens? One day, Pan leaves Lyra saying he's going to find her imagination, and she goes on a quest to try and find him. And literally nothing else happens, but a whole lot of characters that don't matter sure are introduced, and there's a weird political subplot that has nothing to do with Lyra happening. Apart from the fact that Lyra is travelling through countries that are impacted by the rose oil thing, and the fact that the church is involved and they want to capture her for ??? reasons?, 50% of the content does not relate to Lyra. Why does it take her so long to get to the last page of the book? What purpose did Pan's perspective serve apart from showing that whatshisname has a fake daemon? This book was 600+ pages of what should have been maybe 3 chapters of the next book, which I don't think I'll even bother to read because I definitely didn't gain anything out of reading this apart from becoming so fed up with the story that I started noticing Pullman's over-dependence on adverbs.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault