Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
