Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
