Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
