Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
