Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
