Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
