Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader 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 weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
