Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
