Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
