Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
