Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
