Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
