Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
