Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid 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 mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
