Tings are falling apart in the final volume 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. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
