Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, 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 the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
