Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
