Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
