Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
