Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
