Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
