Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
