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 manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
