Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
