Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
