Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
