Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
