Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
