Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
