Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
