Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
