Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
