Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
