Unlike the first volume, which largely tees up His Dark Materials (HDM), this second volume of The Book Of Dust picks up afterwards, and sets a now 20-something Lyra and, more significantly, her daemon Pantalaimon, on another adventure against the revitalised Magisterium.
Motivated by a murder, mysterious goings-on in a distant desert, and the now-fractious relationship between Lyra and Pantalaimon, this is another exceptionally entertaining, fast-paced and highly imaginative journey through Pullman's rich alternative universe. As well as pulling through several other characters from La Belle Sauvage, it fleshes out Lyra's already rich world by sending her and her daemon on separate (!) journeys into Europe and the Middle East. In parallel, friends and foes are hunting them as the Magisterium rallies to counter threats to its theology and control.
Much as in HDM, Pullman continues to needle authoritarian forms of organised religion, but he has a number of enemies in his sights. The troubles in the war-torn Middle East, and the disinterest of Western powers, are laid bare on Lyra's travels. And perhaps surprisingly, the book also takes some well-deserved shots across the bows of the Ultra-rationalists and New Atheists. Even Boris Johnson attracts some of Pullman's ire with a dismissive reference to second-hand water cannons.
The only real downside to the book is that I've unwisely read it when the final volume of the trilogy ("to be concluded") has no official release date in sight, leaving me now chomping at the bit for Book Three.
However, if I can conclude on two niggles, ... Considering the magnitude of the events of HDM, both Lyra and her world are surprisingly unchanged. Confined within her own universe this time, it's largely left unmentioned that she's been to others, even to the Land Of The Dead, that she's met primordial angels and the alien Mulefa, and that she even (if unwittingly) killed "God". It's very easy to forget all this and to enjoy the novel, but it does sometimes feel like an elephant in the room. There's also a slightly queasy feeling around La Belle Sauvage's Malcolm and his attraction to Lyra.
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