Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, 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 merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
