Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the