Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting 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 pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
