🔗 Share this article

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, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics 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 baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the