🔗 Share this article

Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the