Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
