Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
