Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
