Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
