Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
