In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews the second volume in Philip Pullman’s trilogy, The Book of Dust
The first volume of Philip Pullman’s ‘equel’, The Book of Dust, got off to a slow start, although La Belle Sauvage showed the His Dark Materials author’s skill at handling big themes in an engaging narrative. Things moved at an almost glacial pace for much of the first half of the novel, but we gradually came to learn how young Malcolm Polstead’s chance discovery of an acorn containing a secret message dragged him into a world of intrigue, religious authoritarianism, and danger, part of which centred on the baby named Lyra Belacqua.
Now, in the second volume of the trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two (Book of Dust 2)