Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
