Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
