Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
