Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
