Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman'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 novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
