Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
