Things are collapsing in the final volume 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 energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
