Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
