Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, 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". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
