Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
