Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
