Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
