🔗 Share this article

Tings are falling apart in the last installment 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 intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the