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, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
