Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
