Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
