Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
