Tings 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 intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
