Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
