Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – 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 determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
