Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
