Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
