Pandaemonium

I finished reading "The Secret Commonwealth," the second entry in Philip Pullman's new trilogy follow-up to His Dark Materials. I was originally thinking of waiting until finishing the third before writing up my thoughts, but I have some time now so I thought I'd go ahead and pop them in now!

 

 

MINI SPOILERS

It's been a while since I read the original trilogy, although I did watch the excellent TV adaptation not too long ago. From what I remember, I think that this second book "feels" like HDM more than the La Belle Sauvage did. LBS had a more folkloric and dreamlike quality to it, while TSC feels more like an urban fantasy. Traveling through Europe, trains, daemons, the Magisterium, the Alethiometer, spies, politics and more.

The most striking aspect of this novel is the separation between Lyra and Pan. It starts off with their emotional separation: there's a lot of coldness in their relationship, fraught silences, explosive arguments, mutual frustrations. Eventually this leads to a physical rupture and they spend most of the novel apart. This all ties back to Lyra's abandonment of Pan back in the Land of the Dead in the earlier trilogy: that was a brutal betrayal at the time, and it's great (though very sad!) to see that decision continue to reverberate all these years later. It adds even more weight to that action.

In the original series, it seemed like separating was extremely unusual: only witches could do it, and the ability to "sever" is a major plot point. In this book, it seems like tons and tons of people can do it: we keep bumping into people who have separated, sometimes due to infatuation or deception or accident or physical constraints. The greater occurrence of separation is just as surprising to Lyra and Pan as it is to us as readers: what seemed like a metaphysical law is actually only the most common type of relationship.

Lyra in particular is less sympathetic here that in the first series. I think her main character flaw in His Dark Materials was deception ("Liar"), but it never felt like Pullman really judged her for that, and her falsehood is usually a sign of cleverness that she deploys to achieve good ends. In my recollection, the original series ultimately comes across as an ode to reason: its heroes are scientists and explorers devoted to rational experimentation and discovery, while the villains are clergy devoted to upholding a system of belief. Lyra wins by being clever, and her happy ending is becoming a scholar herself.

But in this series, her rationality has kind of curdled into a meanness and pettiness. Pan says that she has "lost her imagination." She's developed a sort of sneering contempt towards abstract ideals. Her mind has been poisoned by a pair of books. One initially seems like a Nietzschean work of philosophy, though once we learn the details it is more specifically unique to Lyra's world. The other is a comedic novel that mocks idealism. Much of the emotional arc of this novel is Lyra reconnecting with non-rational things: the Secret Commonwealth of the title, the hidden world of jacky lanterns and will-o-the-wisps and other folkloric creatures. The novel seems to be arguing for a balance between rationality and creativity/imagination. Rationality is still important but does not stand on its own.

I do need to say that I felt a little bit of squick from the supposed attraction between Lyra and Malcolm. In the first novel she was a babe in arms and he was a boy; now she is 20 and he is 30. The relationship as written makes me immediately think of Charles Stross's phrase "Sad Boner Professor", the literary sub-genre of older male teachers who are drawn to their pretty young students. Pullman directly addresses this in the preface, saying "They are both adults!", which just highlights it and makes it more weird.

On the other hand, very late in this novel Lyra does directly address her "lying with" Will near the end of His Dark Materials and clarifies that they only kissed, which clears up something that had been bothering me for a while about that book.

Moving on: some of this book felt like direct commentary on contemporary issues. In particular, there's a scene later in the novel where a boat full of migrants and refugees from North Africa and the Middle East is accidentally destroyed, leading to a tumultuous scene as they try to rescue as many survivors as possible, care for them and ultimately resettle them. That definitely seemed to me like a clear parallel of the Syrian refugee crisis in particular, and more broadly the topic of European assimilation of immigrants from Muslim countries.

Ultimately this felt like a highly episodic novel. Particularly in the second half, each chapter is almost its own stand-alone story where Lyra, Pan or Malcolm travel to a new location and have an encounter there before moving on. There's the magician who turned his son into the element of fire and the son's daemon into the element of water; there's the princess whose daemon left her for an exotic dancer; there's the blind girl who reads romance novels written in Braille; there's life among the Untouchable daemon-less Tajik nightsoilmen; and on and on. It's fun, and feels a lot like an episodic TV show or something.

END SPOILERS

Oh, I also should mention that this book is a LOT longer than the first one. I was surprised when I checked it out at the library, noting it clocked in at over 600 pages. But of course it's highly readable and moves along quickly. The story definitely rambles at time, but I think that's part of the charm, as we get to explore more of Lyra's world, especially the areas controlled by the Magisterium.

I'm pleased to see that the third and final book came out fairly recently, I hope to track that down and wrap things up before too long!