Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
