Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
