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Shop nowThe Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreBrought to you by Penguin.
Shortlisted for Audiobook of the Year at the British Book Awards 2020.
Winner of Best Solo Narration at the New York Festival Radio Awards 2020
It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.
It is almost ten years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.
Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . .
The second volume of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.
Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.
The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself, to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers.
"Michael Sheen throws himself wholeheartedly into narrating this sequel to La Belle Sauvage and listeners will be rapt. For the ever-expanding international cast of characters, Sheen conjures a multitude of accents and delivers rapid-fire conversations between them. He's in step with the text at every turn; when situations become fraught or dangerous, Sheen ramps up the tension exquisitely. Thanks to Pullman's intricate storytelling and Sheen's propulsive narration, listeners will be on the edge of their seats right up to the cliff-hanger ending" AudioFile
Philip Pullman was born in Norwich and educated in England, Zimbabwe, Australia and Wales. He studied English at Exeter College, Oxford.
His first children's book, Count Karlstein, was published in 1982. To date, he has published thirty-three books, read by children and adults alike. His most famous work is the His Dark Materials trilogy. These books have been honoured by several prizes including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Book Prize, and (for The Amber Spyglass) the Whitbread Book of the Year Award - the first time that prize had been given to a children's book. Pullman has received numerous other awards, including the Eleanor Farjeon Award and the Astrid Lindgren Award. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year's Honours List for Services to Literature.
Reviews
[Pullman] has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in rigour and stylistic elegance. This is a book for getting older with The Secret Commonwealth is ablaze with light and life. The writing is exquisite; every sentence sings ... To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in Technicolour Lyra is all grown up in a rich, vivid sequel Engrossing Pullman's story is still thought-provoking ... This book elegantly weaves in live issues, from Europe's refugee crisis to facts in the post-truth era. And Pullman's prose is rewarding as ever The novel gallops forward, full of danger, delight and surprise. Nearly miraculous, it seems, is Pullman's ability to sketch character, place and motive in just a few lines A long, taxing, complex journey, laced with beauty, terror and philosophy As ever, Pullman's story is complex and vast but home to some of the finest storytelling in the 21st century. Revel in whole new worlds and enjoy one of literature's most wonderful heroines before she comes to HBO and the BBC Pullman is confronting readers with the horrors of our own world reflected back at us. In The Secret Commonwealth he creates a fearful symmetry Pullman has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in this new volume. This is a book for getting older withREVIEWS FOR LA BELLE SAUVAGE: THE BOOK OF DUST VOLUME ONE:
Fans of His Dark Materials will find themselves joyfully immersed in a familiar world . . . meanwhile, awaiting first-time readers is all the pleasure of commencing their own journey into this most captivating of universes at the very beginning of Lyra's story