Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
