Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
