Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element 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. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
