Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
