Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
