Mark your calendars because the second volume of The Book of Dust, titled The Secret Commonwealth, hits bookshelves late 2019.
2019 is a great year to be a fan of Philip Pullman’s work. Not only will we see His Dark Materials brought to life once more, this time for television, but the second volume in the Book of Dust trilogy will arrive this fall.
The Secret Commonwealth release date is set for October 3, 2019. The events will pick up 20 years after the conclusion of La Belle Sauvage, the first novel released in 2017. The stories run parallel to the events set down by Pullman almost two decades ago in His Dark Materials, adding even more color to his imaginative world.
Related: La Belle Sauvage review: A masterful return to Pullman’s mythical world
According to Penguin, the book will pick up seven years after the conclusion of The Amber Spyglass and will send Lyra to Asia where she heads to “an elusive town said to be haunted by dæmons.”
The full synopsis reads: “The second volume of Sir 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 dæmons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.”
In a release from the publisher Pullman said, “At the heart of the book are Lyra, the young woman we saw first as a girl of twelve and then as a baby, and Malcolm, whose life as a boy became involved with hers and who now finds their lives helplessly entangled again; and how some emotions can last a lifetime, and others change beyond recognition.”
The book trailer contains the exchange:
“You used to be optimistic. You used to to think that whatever we did would turn out well. Even after we came back from the north, you used to think that.”
“I used to be young.”
Age and experience has a way of changing people. But luckily for fans of Pullman’s books, we can still find our way back after all this time.
We're very excited to tell you that The Secret Commonwealth: Volume Two of The #BookOfDust by Philip Pullman– set seven years after The Amber Spyglass will be out later this year.
Here is everything you need to know about the new book so far: https://t.co/2QUjKFiOwz pic.twitter.com/QkIMYT26Qh
— Penguin Books UK (@PenguinUKBooks) February 27, 2019
You can read an excerpt from The Secret Commonwealth on Penguin’s site.
The Secret Commonwealth, the second volume in the Book of Dust series, arrives October 3, 2019.
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