Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
