Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking 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 offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
