Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
