Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. 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 joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
