Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
