Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
