Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
