Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave 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 aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
