Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
