Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
