Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
