Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
