Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
