Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
