Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
