Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
