Things are falling apart in the final volume 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. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
