Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
