Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
