Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
