Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
