Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
