Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
