Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – 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 pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
