Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
