Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
