Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
