Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
