Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
