Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
