Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
