Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
