Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury 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 first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
