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 slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
