Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
