Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
