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 energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
