Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
