Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
