Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
