Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
