Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
