Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds 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 external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
