Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
