Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
