Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
