Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
