Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
