Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
