Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
