Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
