Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
