Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
