Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
