Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
