Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
