Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
