Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
