Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
