Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
