Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
