Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
