🔗 Share this article

Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the