Things are collapsing in the last installment 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 energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
