Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
