Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
