Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
