Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
