Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing 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". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
