Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the