Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting 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 states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
