Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river 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 find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
The book begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
Eva de Vries is a passionate book lover and local writer from Eindhoven.
