Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe 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 veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
