Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
