Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
