Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
