Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
