Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
