Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
