Han reality.

I thought the first Book Of Dust would have made a pretty good short story and I didn’t think it made a good novel, so I waited a while before I read The Secret Commonwealth. It started out fine and drew me in but became more and more bogged down in unnecessary detail which doesn’t move the story forward.in the end I gave up 3/4 of the way through somewhere near Czechoslovakia. I flicked to the end, read it and was pleased that I had bailed. It is more like Ruby in The Smoke than the Dark Materials books, and if you want a great read, go back to his first brilliant trilogy.