Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
