Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
