Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
