Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
