Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
