Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
