Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
