Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
