Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
