Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
