Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
