Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
