Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
