Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
