Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
