Tings are unraveling in the concluding book 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 charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
