Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
