Tings are unraveling in the last installment 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 charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, 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". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
