Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
