Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
