Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden 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 states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
