Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
