Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
