Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
