Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
