🔗 Share this article

Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the