Tings are falling apart in the final volume 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 intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
