Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
