Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
