Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
