Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring 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 flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
