Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials 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 young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
