Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
