Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
