Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story 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 aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
