Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
