Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
