Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
