Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
