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 manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
