Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
