Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
