Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
