Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
