Tings are collapsing in the concluding book 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 energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – 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 the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
