Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, 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 pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
