Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
