Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
