Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified 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
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
