Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
