Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
