Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
