Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
