Tings are collapsing in the last installment 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 energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
