Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
