Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new 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". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the