Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look 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 below, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
