Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
