Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
