Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
