Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
