Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified 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.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
