Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
