Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
