Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
