Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl 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 Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
