Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
