Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
