Tings are falling apart in the last installment 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 intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises 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 voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
