Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
