Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
