Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
