Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
