Things are falling apart in the final volume 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 intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
