Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
