{"id":4587,"date":"2022-10-10T15:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/?page_id=4587"},"modified":"2022-10-11T08:29:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T08:29:54","slug":"the-secret-commonwealth-by-philip-pullman","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/writing\/book-reviews\/the-secret-commonwealth-by-philip-pullman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Commonwealth, by Philip Pullman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/secret-commonwealth.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4629\" src=\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/secret-commonwealth.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"191\" height=\"293\" \/><\/a>The Secret Commonwealth<\/em>, by Philip Pullman<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A welcome return to form. I read <del>The Good Sausage<\/del> <em>La Belle Sauvage<\/em> and thought \u2026 okay. That\u2019s Lyra\u2019s 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\u2019s huge fun watching Pullman make a new picture out of all the pieces he has essentially thrown up into the air. It\u2019s also interesting that Lyra has fallen under the influence of a pair of joyless, rationalist, reductionist writers that I suspect reflect Pullman\u2019s views on our own world\u2019s New Atheists. He\u2019s aware that now he\u2019s a Famous Atheist&#x2122; himself he is automatically lumped with the likes of D&#8212;&#8211;s and H&#8212;&#8212;s, and wants to distance himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Secret Commonwealth, by Philip Pullman A welcome return to form. I read The Good Sausage La Belle Sauvage and thought \u2026 okay. That\u2019s Lyra\u2019s origin story. Great, very nice, so what? This is set 20 years later, nearly a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/writing\/book-reviews\/the-secret-commonwealth-by-philip-pullman\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":368,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4587","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4665,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4587\/revisions\/4665"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}