Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
