Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
