Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, 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 conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
