Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
