Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
