Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
