Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden 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 states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
