Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
