Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
