The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman, 784 pages
The continuing story of Lyra, Pantalaimon, Malcolm Polstead, and many other characters from both series: The Book of Dust series and the His Dark Materials series. This book starts with Lyra at age 20. She and her daemon, Pantalaimon, have been arguing fiercely about things both big and small and because unlike most humans and daemons, they have the power to separate, Pantalaimon begins to leave Lyra alone, eventually leaving her for good. Lyra begins a journey to find him and meets many characters along the way, some new and some returning from previous books. Meanwhile, Malcolm finds himself more involved with his work with Oakley Street (a secret organization) and reluctantly travels abroad as well, when what he'd really like to do is to stay near Lyra, and not just for professional reasons.
And while all of this kept me plowing quickly through about 3/4 of this large book, either the plot got too convoluted or I got distracted and I slowed down. I also understood that this book could not tie things up neatly at all with the number of pages left and became disappointed knowing very little would be resolved by the end. I love the author and the characters and hold out every hope that by the third book, things will be resolved. This middle book was a cliffhanger but I look forward to the third book of what I believe is a trilogy when I'll get all the answers I want (and probably some I don't want, but that's okay too!).
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