Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
