Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
