Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
