Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
