Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
