Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
