Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
