Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
