Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
