Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
