Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
