🔗 Share this article

Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world

In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the