Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
