Things are falling apart in the concluding book 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 energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
