Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
