Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
