Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, 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 knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
