Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
