Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
