Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
