Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
