Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
