Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
