Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
