Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
