Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
