Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
