Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
