Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
