Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
