Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
