Second Book of Dust novel, but the first full book length sequel to the His Dark Materials books. Has a lot of good stuff & interesting ideas, & I mostly like where the plot goes, but I felt some important aspects needed to be shown more than told to us the readers. Maybe I'm embedded too much in rationality, but I didn't really feel the connections between rationalism & Lyra's personality changes (since the last book) & her personality conflicts with Pan. I feel that to make those conflicts more believable, Pullman should have shown her being more unlikable &/or insufferable, perhaps even a “knowledge-brain” pedant. I was also put off by the story setting up Malcolm & Lyra as some sort of Item-in-waiting. In addition to being kind of creepy, the love interest between Lyra & Malcolm also felt forced & unnecessary. That said, The Secret Commonwealth is still pretty good. The Lyra/Pan imagination/rationalism conflict, while not explained or shown adequately, is at least easy enough to go along with, & the Mal-Lyra love connection is mostly only hinted at & doesn't take up too much space. The Secret Commonwealth is the most topical & of its time of all the Pullman books I've read (making Iron Council incredibly prescient), with a kind of mirror-world equivalent of the War on Terror driven refugee crisis in Europe. Looking forward to reading the third book in the series, but I do hope Pullman gives himself enough time (& editing) to get the last one right.