Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
