Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
