Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
