Tings 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, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
