Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
