Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture 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 maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
