Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
