Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
