Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
