Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
