Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
