Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
