Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "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 whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
