Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
