Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
