Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
