Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
