Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
