Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
