Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
