Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
