Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
