Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
