Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
