Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
