Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, 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 firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
