PositiveThe New RepublicReaders of The Secret Commonwealth may feel a bit like Lyra: This return to Pullman’s world is at once a warm, comforting re-submergence into fantasia and a sometimes jarring, unfamiliar experience. Where the narrative force of Pullman’s earlier novels...was linear and propulsive, the plot of The Secret Commonwealth is intentionally twisted, even slightly frayed. It meanders, like Lyra’s journey, and we are often left with only hints about the machinations of venal politicians and the possibility of magic lingering in the margins. The story, just like Lyra, is more grown-up, more mature. Moral conviction is hard-won, and it never lasts. The ethical thing to do is to act, but also to keep on questioning what the right action even is ... What makes Pullman’s use of fantasy stories distinctive is that they are fundamentally a vehicle for secular truth-seeking. And if his plots tell us anything, it’s that truth-seeking and moral action are always a journey, never a destination.
Michael Ondaatje
RaveThe New RepublicSet in London in 1945, a city still broken from the Blitz, Warlight is a lyrical journey into the past, illuminating, as its title implies, both the traumas and the possibilities of rebuilding a life after war ... an entrancing and masterfully crafted story ... at a time when so much of warfare is difficult to see—special forces operations, cyberattacks, mass surveillance, and drone strikes—a novel can illuminate the human suffering of war by looking at it askance. If that is true, then Warlight is a novel for today’s wars: an invitation, indeed a demand, that we recognize our dependence on others and the profound responsibilities that brings.
