Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden 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 halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
