Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original 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 tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
