Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
