Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography 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 joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
