Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
