🔗 Share this article

Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new 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 hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the