Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
