Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
