Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
