Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
