Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
