Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the