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 appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
