Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
