Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
