Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
