Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the