Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert 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 "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
