Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
