Tings are unraveling in the final volume 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 charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded 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 a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
