Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
