Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
