Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
