Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
