Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
