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 appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
