Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
