Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
