Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
