Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the