Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
