Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
