Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
