Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
