Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
