Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
