Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
