Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
