Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
