Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
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 revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
