Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
