Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
