Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend 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 Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
