Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
