Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted 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 flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
