Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
