Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
