Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the