Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
