Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
