Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation 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 her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
