Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals 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, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, 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 poetic conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
