Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
