Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
