Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
