The Secret Commonwealth, by Philip Pullman

A welcome return to form. I read The Good Sausage La Belle Sauvage and thought … okay. That’s Lyra’s origin story. Great, very nice, so what? This is set 20 years later, nearly a decade after the first trilogy. Lyra is all grown up, barely on speaking terms with her daemon, struggling to read her alethiometer. Everything has changed and it’s huge fun watching Pullman make a new picture out of all the pieces he has essentially thrown up into the air. It’s also interesting that Lyra has fallen under the influence of a pair of joyless, rationalist, reductionist writers that I suspect reflect Pullman’s views on our own world’s New Atheists. He’s aware that now he’s a Famous Atheist™ himself he is automatically lumped with the likes of D—–s and H——s, and wants to distance himself.