Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
