Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
