Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
