Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
