Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
