Things are collapsing in the concluding book 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 energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
