Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
