Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
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, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
