Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
