Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe 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 individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
