Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
