Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge 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 the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
