Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
