Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on 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 paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
