Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
