Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
