Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to open into other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
