Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified 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
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
