Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
