Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
