Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
