Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
