Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
