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 appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
