Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
