Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
