Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
