Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
