Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma 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 the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
