Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
