Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest 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 marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
