Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible 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 states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
