Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
