Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
