Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
