Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
