Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
