Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
