Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar 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". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
