Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the