Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
