Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
