Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
