Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
