Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, 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 Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
