Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling 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". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
