🔗 Share this article

Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the