Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose 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 concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
