Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
