Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
